China's upstart chip companies aim to topple Samsung, Intel and TSMC
Push into semiconductor market raises fears of a supply glut
CHENG TING-FANG, Nikkei staff writer
April 25, 2018 15:00 JST
SHANGHAI/TAIPEI -- Business is booming at the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Museum.
For most of its nine-year history, the museum has been mostly a place for school children to learn about the uses of computer chips. But it has become a hot ticket for officials from all over China ever since Beijing declared that creating a world-leading semiconductor industry was a top national priority.
On a recent weekday this spring, Lance Long, the museum's director, was hosting a tour for officials from Urumqi, the Xinjiang capital known for being the world's most landlocked city. Before that, Long hosted groups from distant provinces such as Gansu and Yunnan and even Mongolia. All told, some 200 groups came last year for an education in China's next big thing.
"Many of these representatives knew very little about chips, but they all want to capture this once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity being led by high-ranked policymakers," Long told the Nikkei Asian Review.
This national enthusiasm reflects China's towering ambitions for its semiconductor industry. China, and its young chipmakers, are clear about their goal: to break the dominance of American, South Korean, Taiwanese and Japanese semiconductor companies. The government wants to create Chinese versions of most of the industry's leaders, then leapfrog them in the race for advanced chips used in artificial intelligence.
In March, Premier Li Keqiang named semiconductors as the top priority of the 10 industries China wants to foster in its "Made in China 2025" initiative. But China's ambitions were already clear in 2014 when it launched the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund -- better known as the Big Fund -- in 2014 with 138 billion yuan ($21.9 billion) in seed capital, which it hoped would turbocharge investment from local governments and the private sector. The Big Fund is in its second phase of fundraising for at least 150 billion yuan. Credit Suisse estimates China's total investment to be around $140 billion.
China wants to end its reliance on foreign technology -- its annual imports of $260 billion worth of semiconductor-related products have recently risen above its spending on oil. It also wants to move its manufacturing sector to higher-value products.
But there are also national security concerns. Chips serve as the brains for every electronic device -- from smartphones and PCs to connected cars and data centers -- and therefore have strong implications for intelligence. China wants to defend against the types of national security breaches exposed by Edward Snowden's 2013 leaks, which revealed connections between American technology providers and the U.S. National Security Agency's vast surveillance program.
This position is a mirror-image of the increasingly hard-line U.S. stance toward China. American regulators have cited national security concerns when it has curbed chip and other deals with Chinese groups, and has recently fired the opening shots in a trade war to penalize China for stealing high-tech intellectual property. To Beijing, such moves point to an all-out U.S. effort to slow China's aggressive attempt to become a new semiconductor superpower.
"The U.S. is really feeling the threat," said Jerry Peng, an analyst at research unit IEK of Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan.
There is no guarantee of success for China's chip push, however. The country's previous efforts to build a chip industry, including a major drive in the 1990s, were mostly unsuccessful. Its technology is far behind that of global giants such as Samsung Electronics and Intel, making China's goal of producing 75% of the chips it uses domestically by 2025 seem highly ambitious, analysts at Natixis say.
Unlike its previous efforts, when its investments were scattered and ill-placed, China is seeking to bring in expertise from the outside by luring foreign companies to set up advanced production facilities within its territories. This will help create a full supply chain and attract talent. The latest move by the U.S. to bar American companies from selling any components to ZTE, a Chinese telecom equipment provider and smartphone maker, has only strengthened China's determination to replace as many foreign suppliers as possible, according to multiple industry executives.
The recent U.S. move to bar American companies from selling components to ZTE has made China more determined to create its own chip ecosystem. © Getty Images
Analysts also say China has learned from its past mistakes.
"It's totally different from decades ago when China suffered through a frustrating experience to build semiconductors out of nowhere," Mark Li, an analyst at Bernstein Research said. "This time, it's a totally different story as the country has all the right ingredients, including a massive market and strong local makers of smartphones, TVs, PCs, and automobiles ... . It could be just a matter of time for them to bear fruit."
Memory chip push
The first fruits of Beijing's big investment in chips could come as soon as the end of next year, when it will begin shipping its first batch of memory chips. Right now, China has yet to produce such chips in substantial volumes. But industry executives say Chinese memory chips could cause a major disruption in the market once its manufacturers are able to produce them in sufficient quantities, which they expect to happen in three to five years.
When that happens, it could have an impact on two markets: NAND flash memory and DRAM memory chips.
Production of global NAND flash memory-- a $58 billion market annually -- is controlled by only six companies: Samsung Electronics, Toshiba, Western Digital, SK Hynix, Micron Technology and Intel.
DRAMs are dominated by an even smaller group of companies: Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron, which together held 95% of the $71 billion global market in 2017, according to Taipei-based research company TrendForce.
Helped by strong demand and tight supplies, Samsung and SK Hynix alone generated some $85 billion in memory chip sales in 2017, higher than the gross domestic product of Luxembourg. The combined semiconductor operating profit from both companies -- about $46 billion -- would be 1.6 times higher than what the two biggest Japanese companies, Toyota Motor and SoftBank Group, earned together in fiscal 2017.
"It's so unhealthy about the recent memory price hike, and it's so unfair that such important components are controlled by very few companies," a Chinese chip industry executive told the Nikkei Asian Review. "The road could be bumpy, but we need to have our domestic memory chips for sure, and we wouldn't care at first whether we could make a profit or whether we cause a price crash in the market."
Yangtze Memory Technologies is spending $24 billion to build one of China's first advanced memory chip factories in the city of Wuhan. (Courtesy of Tsinghua Unigroup)
A little-known state-backed conglomerate called Tsinghua Unigroup will play a key role in determining whether Chinese chipmakers can successfully challenge the dominance of Samsung, SK Hynix and Toshiba in the memory market.
Tsinghua initially tried to buy its way into the market, but its $23 billion bid to acquire Micron and a separate attempt to become the largest shareholder of Western Digital were blocked by the U.S. government. At the same time, the industry's dominant players were reluctant to license their technology to the aggressive latecomer. But those setbacks did not dampen Tsinghua's enthusiasm.
The group's affiliate, Yangtze Memory Technologies, is spending $24 billion to build the country's first advanced memory chip factories in the city of Wuhan. It has poached thousands of engineers from Samsung, SK Hynix, Micron and Nanya Technology, and on April 11, it began moving equipment into the factory.
Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo announced that the company should begin producing its first batch of 32-layer NAND flash memory chips this year. But Avril Wu, a longtime market watcher at TrendForce, said it is likely that Yangtze Memory will not be ready to ship the more advanced 64-layer chips, currently the industry standard, until the end of 2019 at the earliest.
Tsinghua Unigroup Chairman Zhao Weiguo © Reuters
Apple, the world's biggest consumer of NAND flash memory, recently visited Yangtze Memory to learn about its development status, according to people familiar with the matter. It is not clear whether the iPhone maker received pressure from China to evaluate a potential supply deal, but Apple will undoubtedly want to continue diversifying its memory chip suppliers in order to reduce its reliance on Samsung, multiple industry sources and analysts have said.
Roger Sheng, an analyst at Gartner, said Chinese memory chipmakers still have a long way to go before they make a dent in the market. Still, his company expects that in the NAND flash memory segment, Yangtze Memory could come to replace some low-end providers in three years and compete with first-tier players in five years.
Samsung Electronics CEO Kim Ki-nam and Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra are aware of China's offensive, but both say Chinese chipmakers face high technological barriers to entering the market. "We recognize that the Chinese government is supporting [these emerging players] actively ... but it's difficult to narrow technological gaps in the short term solely through big investments," Samsung's Kim said at the company's annual general meeting in March.
The memory chip market is notoriously volatile, swinging between periods of supply shortages and serious gluts. Despite China's technological hurdles, executives from top memory chipmakers worry that Chinese companies could flood the market with cheap semiconductors, leading to a repeat of the massive oversupply that hit the industry a decade ago.
There may be good reason for such concern -- the planned capacity from China is huge. Yangtze Memory has set out to make 300,000 NAND flash wafers a month in years to come, equivalent to some 20% of current global output. "Even if only some one-third or even less of [planned production] is realized in three to five years, it could cause a major price drop for memory chips and hurt the profitability of current suppliers," said Sean Yang, an analyst at Shanghai-based CINNO.
Chinese chipmakers will have the advantage of a vast end market of local gadget makers eager to use more domestic chips. Chinese brands controlled roughly 50% of the global smartphone market and 36% of the PC and tablet computer market in 2017, according to Gartner. Government agencies would also be first-wave adopters.
Another potential hurdle -- intellectual property, including chip design and production techniques -- is not a worry for Chinese chipmakers, analysts say. "Intellectual property issues would never be a roadblock for these newcomers," said IEK's Peng. "The most important task is to deliver the results, and even if there is any concerns with IPs, they can always later come back to negotiate with these big guys to settle the case with a certain license fee."
A dilemma for foreign chipmakers
While IP may not be a worry for the Chinese companies, it is a very real concern for foreign chip giants such as Intel, Samsung, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) and SK Hynix. Like companies in other sectors, high-tech groups are eager to have access to the Chinese market, but wary of handing over valuable technology secrets to state-sponsored competitors.
For China, bringing in as many world-class foreign chip producers as possible is the easiest way to achieve its goal of cultivating a supply chain ecosystem to support its new industry.
"For the longer term, expanding advanced production sites in China could be a trade-off for the existing players because they are potentially helping their competitors," said a Taiwanese chip industry executive who asked not to be named. "It's like these newcomers can go to Harvard or MIT near their home rather than going abroad."
TSMC, for instance, has spent $3 billion on an advanced 12-inch chip facility in the Chinese city of Nanjing, which began production ahead of schedule in April. The world's No. 1 contract chipmaker relies on Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia and other U.S. clients for 60% of its revenue, but Chinese customers are its fastest growing, making up some 11% of sales in 2017, up from 9% the previous year.
Tsinghua Unigroup plans to build a memory chip production site the size of 2,380 basketball courts in Nanjing. (Photo by Cheng Ting-Fang)
Not far away from TSMC's Nanjing facility, Tsinghua Unigroup is planning to build a $30 billion megasite the size of 2,380 basketball courts to produce memory chips. The Tsinghua project would benefit from any suppliers that TSMC brings to the community.
"It's very difficult for emerging players to secure good support from best-in-class chip equipment and material suppliers, but foreign chipmakers would bring a whole cluster of them even to some distant cities should they have a facility there," said Gartner's Sheng. "And these foreign chipmakers could help us train a huge group of engineers that could later work for local Chinese companies."
This complicated dynamic will only be exacerbated once homegrown Chinese chipmakers make it to the global stage.
"We will see more and more conflicts of interests later -- between countries and also between local and foreign suppliers later," said CINNO's Yang. "This ongoing trade friction between the U.S. and China is just one example."
Nikkei staff writers Hiromi Sato in Silicon Valley, Kim Jaewon in Seoul and Lauly Li in Taipei contributed to this report.
Friday, April 27, 2018
Prince Louis Arthur Charles - William and Kate name their baby - Reuters
APRIL 27, 2018 / 8:07 PM / UPDATED 12 MINUTES AGO
Prince Louis Arthur Charles - William and Kate name their baby
Reuters Staff
LONDON (Reuters) - Prince William and his wife Kate have named their newborn son Louis Arthur Charles, who will be known as His Royal Highness Prince Louis of Cambridge, Kensington Palace said on Friday.
Britain's Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William leave the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital with their new baby boy in London, April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay
The prince, who is fifth in line to the British throne, was born at 1001 GMT on April 23 weighing 8 lbs 7oz.
Louis is William’s fourth name as well as being that of Earl Mountbatten, to whom William’s father Prince Charles was particularly close. Mountbatten was the uncle of Prince Philip, 96, great-grandfather of the new prince.
Charles, heir to the throne, has said it was a great joy to have another grandchild.
William and Kate now have three children: Louis joins Charlotte, 2, and George, 4.
For a boy, the leading bets were for Albert, Arthur, Alexander, James and Philip. The betting odds indicated just a 5 percent chance of Louis.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison
Prince Louis Arthur Charles - William and Kate name their baby
Reuters Staff
LONDON (Reuters) - Prince William and his wife Kate have named their newborn son Louis Arthur Charles, who will be known as His Royal Highness Prince Louis of Cambridge, Kensington Palace said on Friday.
Britain's Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William leave the Lindo Wing of St Mary's Hospital with their new baby boy in London, April 23, 2018. REUTERS/Hannah Mckay
The prince, who is fifth in line to the British throne, was born at 1001 GMT on April 23 weighing 8 lbs 7oz.
Louis is William’s fourth name as well as being that of Earl Mountbatten, to whom William’s father Prince Charles was particularly close. Mountbatten was the uncle of Prince Philip, 96, great-grandfather of the new prince.
Charles, heir to the throne, has said it was a great joy to have another grandchild.
William and Kate now have three children: Louis joins Charlotte, 2, and George, 4.
For a boy, the leading bets were for Albert, Arthur, Alexander, James and Philip. The betting odds indicated just a 5 percent chance of Louis.
Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Alistair Smout; editing by Stephen Addison
Joint police action 'punches big hole' in Isis propaganda ability - Guardian
Joint police action 'punches big hole' in Isis propaganda ability
Computer servers seized in two-day operation in Europe, US and Canada to prevent radicalisation
Jamie Grierson
@JamieGrierson
Fri 27 Apr 2018 20.21 AEST Last modified on Fri 27 Apr 2018 20.58 AEST
Rob Wainwright, director of Europol
Law enforcement authorities have “punched a big hole” in Islamic State’s propaganda machine, targeting news agencies and radio stations used by the jihadi group to radicalise people across the world.
Isis computer servers in the Netherlands, Canada and the US, as well as digital evidence in Bulgaria, France and Romania, have been seized in a two-day takedown operation co-ordinated by Europol.
UK authorities took part in the operation, dealing with top-level domain registrars – companies that register websites – abused by Isis.
The action targeted Isis-branded media outlets such as Amaq and Nashir news agencies and al-Bayan radio, hitting the extremist organisation’s ability to broadcast and publicise terrorist material.
Rob Wainwright, executive director of Europol, said: “With this groundbreaking operation we have punched a big hole in the capability of IS [Isis] to spread propaganda online and radicalise young people in Europe.”
The data captured as part of the operation will help to identify the administrators behind Isis media outlets, Europol said.
Home Office unveils AI program to tackle Isis online propaganda
Amaq is the main mouthpiece for Isis and has been used to claim responsibility for terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, Berlin and Trebes. Europol and law enforcement across Europe have been targeting the news agency and other Isis outlets since 2015.
In June 2017, an operation targeted at Amaq’s web assets and infrastructure led to the identification of radicalised individuals in more than 100 countries.
The EU security commissioner, Julian King, said: “This shows that by working together we can stamp out the poisonous propaganda Daesh [Isis] has used to fuel many of the recent terror attacks in Europe. For too long the internet has been open to terrorists and those who seek to do us harm. Those days are coming to an end thanks to this type of co-ordinated global work.”
Computer servers seized in two-day operation in Europe, US and Canada to prevent radicalisation
Jamie Grierson
@JamieGrierson
Fri 27 Apr 2018 20.21 AEST Last modified on Fri 27 Apr 2018 20.58 AEST
Rob Wainwright, director of Europol
Law enforcement authorities have “punched a big hole” in Islamic State’s propaganda machine, targeting news agencies and radio stations used by the jihadi group to radicalise people across the world.
Isis computer servers in the Netherlands, Canada and the US, as well as digital evidence in Bulgaria, France and Romania, have been seized in a two-day takedown operation co-ordinated by Europol.
UK authorities took part in the operation, dealing with top-level domain registrars – companies that register websites – abused by Isis.
The action targeted Isis-branded media outlets such as Amaq and Nashir news agencies and al-Bayan radio, hitting the extremist organisation’s ability to broadcast and publicise terrorist material.
Rob Wainwright, executive director of Europol, said: “With this groundbreaking operation we have punched a big hole in the capability of IS [Isis] to spread propaganda online and radicalise young people in Europe.”
The data captured as part of the operation will help to identify the administrators behind Isis media outlets, Europol said.
Home Office unveils AI program to tackle Isis online propaganda
Amaq is the main mouthpiece for Isis and has been used to claim responsibility for terrorist attacks in Paris, Brussels, Barcelona, Berlin and Trebes. Europol and law enforcement across Europe have been targeting the news agency and other Isis outlets since 2015.
In June 2017, an operation targeted at Amaq’s web assets and infrastructure led to the identification of radicalised individuals in more than 100 countries.
The EU security commissioner, Julian King, said: “This shows that by working together we can stamp out the poisonous propaganda Daesh [Isis] has used to fuel many of the recent terror attacks in Europe. For too long the internet has been open to terrorists and those who seek to do us harm. Those days are coming to an end thanks to this type of co-ordinated global work.”
Mueller won't find a 'stitch of evidence' that Trump colluded with Russians: Giuliani - ABC News
Mueller won't find a 'stitch of evidence' that Trump colluded with Russians: Giuliani
By JOHN SANTUCCI Apr 25, 2018, 9:33 PM ET
WATCHGiuliani: Mueller won't find a 'stitch of evidence' Trump colluded with Russians
Email
President Donald Trump's old campaign pit bull is already reclaiming his role of defending his friend.
Interested in Russia Investigation?
Add Russia Investigation as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Russia Investigation news, video, and analysis from ABC News.
Russia Investigation Add Interest
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who last week formally joined the president's legal team handling the Russia probe, is already firing off at special counsel Robert Mueller's team.
"I can guarantee you this: When Mueller is finished, no matter whatever he does, he’s not going to have a stitch of evidence that [Trump] colluded with the Russians. Now, that's a disgrace. The case should be over,” Giuliani, who is also a former federal prosecutor, told ABC affiliate WMUR in an interview Wednesday.
The Trump legal team, including Giuliani, met with Mueller’s team on Tuesday, sources with direct knowledge confirmed to ABC News. One source said the meeting is “part of ongoing negotiations.” The source added the president remains apprehensive about agreeing to an interview of any kind with the special counsel at this time but negotiations are continuing.
News of the meeting was first reported by The Washington Post.
What Giuliani's past tells us about how he may represent Trump
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani joining Trump legal team along with others
"First of all, [Trump is] innocent. There isn't a person in the world who thinks he's guilty of collusion with the Russians,” Giuliani went on to tell WMUR.
For months prior to Giuliani's arrival, the president's lawyers have had multiple meetings with the special counsel's office regarding a potential interview by the president. The options, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, have included a formal sit down with parameters or a questionnaire.
Yet ever since an early morning raid was carried out against Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen, sources close to the president say the commander-in-chief is "less inclined" to sit down for an interview with Mueller.
Mueller's office has declined to comment on the alleged meetings with Trump's lawyers.
By JOHN SANTUCCI Apr 25, 2018, 9:33 PM ET
WATCHGiuliani: Mueller won't find a 'stitch of evidence' Trump colluded with Russians
President Donald Trump's old campaign pit bull is already reclaiming his role of defending his friend.
Interested in Russia Investigation?
Add Russia Investigation as an interest to stay up to date on the latest Russia Investigation news, video, and analysis from ABC News.
Russia Investigation Add Interest
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who last week formally joined the president's legal team handling the Russia probe, is already firing off at special counsel Robert Mueller's team.
"I can guarantee you this: When Mueller is finished, no matter whatever he does, he’s not going to have a stitch of evidence that [Trump] colluded with the Russians. Now, that's a disgrace. The case should be over,” Giuliani, who is also a former federal prosecutor, told ABC affiliate WMUR in an interview Wednesday.
The Trump legal team, including Giuliani, met with Mueller’s team on Tuesday, sources with direct knowledge confirmed to ABC News. One source said the meeting is “part of ongoing negotiations.” The source added the president remains apprehensive about agreeing to an interview of any kind with the special counsel at this time but negotiations are continuing.
News of the meeting was first reported by The Washington Post.
What Giuliani's past tells us about how he may represent Trump
Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani joining Trump legal team along with others
"First of all, [Trump is] innocent. There isn't a person in the world who thinks he's guilty of collusion with the Russians,” Giuliani went on to tell WMUR.
For months prior to Giuliani's arrival, the president's lawyers have had multiple meetings with the special counsel's office regarding a potential interview by the president. The options, according to sources familiar with the negotiations, have included a formal sit down with parameters or a questionnaire.
Yet ever since an early morning raid was carried out against Trump's personal attorney Michael Cohen, sources close to the president say the commander-in-chief is "less inclined" to sit down for an interview with Mueller.
Mueller's office has declined to comment on the alleged meetings with Trump's lawyers.
Romania's president calls on PM to quit over Israel embassy move - Reuters
APRIL 27, 2018 / 7:12 PM / UPDATED 15 MINUTES AGO
Romania's president calls on PM to quit over Israel embassy move
Radu-Sorin Marinas
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania’s president called on the prime minister to resign on Friday after she endorsed a secret deal to move the country’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, overstepping her powers on foreign policy.
Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila speaks during a visit at Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The head of state cannot dismiss the premier but President Klaus Iohannis’ call could trigger a no-confidence vote, something Prime Minister Viorica Dancila should easily survive given her party’s robust majority in parliament.
“Mrs. Dancila is not coping with her position of prime minister of Romania and thus is turning the government into a liability for Romania. That is why I am calling publicly for her resignation,” Iohannis said in a statement.
Any decision on embassy relocation rests with the president, who said he was not consulted about that or the state visit Dancila paid to Israel this week along with the leader of her Social Democrat party, Liviu Dragnea.
Dancila has said the memorandum she approved was confidential and could not be made public yet.
Iohannis - who has the final say in foreign policy matters - said moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which is not widely recognized as Israel’s capital due to competing sovereignty claims by the Palestinians, has said the move could break international law.
“A secret document, a secret foreign policy memorandum, was discussed last week in the government. That was a big mistake,” Iohannis said.
“Because in foreign policy matters, if we are talking about secret documents, which obviously are sensitive otherwise they should not be secrets, the president should have been consulted, which did not happen,” Iohannis added.
Dancila has yet to comment on his call for her to resign.
Romania would be the first EU country and one of very few countries in the world to relocate its embassy following U.S. President Donald Trump recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December.
The Romanian foreign ministry had said the memorandum was only the start of a wide consultation process and that it sought to identify the best way for Romania to position itself.
It added Romania’s position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation “has traditionally been a balanced one, including ... bilaterally recognizing the Palestinian state.”
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “at least half a dozen” countries were considering moving their embassies to Jerusalem. The U.S. Embassy is due to relocate on May 14.
Editing by Robin Pomeroy
Romania's president calls on PM to quit over Israel embassy move
Radu-Sorin Marinas
BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Romania’s president called on the prime minister to resign on Friday after she endorsed a secret deal to move the country’s embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, overstepping her powers on foreign policy.
Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila speaks during a visit at Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Jerusalem, April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The head of state cannot dismiss the premier but President Klaus Iohannis’ call could trigger a no-confidence vote, something Prime Minister Viorica Dancila should easily survive given her party’s robust majority in parliament.
“Mrs. Dancila is not coping with her position of prime minister of Romania and thus is turning the government into a liability for Romania. That is why I am calling publicly for her resignation,” Iohannis said in a statement.
Any decision on embassy relocation rests with the president, who said he was not consulted about that or the state visit Dancila paid to Israel this week along with the leader of her Social Democrat party, Liviu Dragnea.
Dancila has said the memorandum she approved was confidential and could not be made public yet.
Iohannis - who has the final say in foreign policy matters - said moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which is not widely recognized as Israel’s capital due to competing sovereignty claims by the Palestinians, has said the move could break international law.
“A secret document, a secret foreign policy memorandum, was discussed last week in the government. That was a big mistake,” Iohannis said.
“Because in foreign policy matters, if we are talking about secret documents, which obviously are sensitive otherwise they should not be secrets, the president should have been consulted, which did not happen,” Iohannis added.
Dancila has yet to comment on his call for her to resign.
Romania would be the first EU country and one of very few countries in the world to relocate its embassy following U.S. President Donald Trump recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in December.
The Romanian foreign ministry had said the memorandum was only the start of a wide consultation process and that it sought to identify the best way for Romania to position itself.
It added Romania’s position regarding the Israeli-Palestinian situation “has traditionally been a balanced one, including ... bilaterally recognizing the Palestinian state.”
Last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “at least half a dozen” countries were considering moving their embassies to Jerusalem. The U.S. Embassy is due to relocate on May 14.
Editing by Robin Pomeroy
Germany's Merkel next to visit Trump on a mission of 'damage limitation' - CNBC News
Germany's Merkel next to visit Trump on a mission of 'damage limitation'
Touching down in the afterglow of her French counterpart's three-day visit, Merkel arrives in Washington to try to find a compromise with the president on a raft of divisive issues.
The Iran nuclear deal, the prospect of U.S. tariffs on European metals products and Berlin's military spending are all politically sensitive topics seen as likely to come up during Merkel's working lunch with Trump.
Eurasia Group's Charles Lichfield said Macron's trip to the U.S. had no implications on the balance of power in Europe because the so-called "Trump-whisperer didn't actually get him to agree to very much."
Sam Meredith | @smeredith19
Published April 27, 2018
CNBC.com
President Donald Trump (R), French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) chat at the start of the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, northern Germany, on July 7, 2017.
John MacDougall | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump (R), French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) chat at the start of the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, northern Germany, on July 7, 2017.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is embarking on a one-day working visit to meet President Donald Trump on Friday, harboring no illusions of matching the "special relationship" formed by France's Emmanuel Macron.
Touching down in the afterglow of her French counterpart's three-day visit, Merkel arrives in Washington to try to find a compromise with the president on a raft of divisive issues.
The Iran nuclear deal, the prospect of U.S. tariffs on European metals products and Berlin's military spending are all politically sensitive topics seen as likely to come up during Merkel's working lunch with Trump.
"Macron has a good personal relationship with Trump and Merkel has a bad relationship with him, but it's not necessarily a problem. In fact, I don't actually think she cares that much about it," Charles Lichfield, Europe associate at Eurasia Group, told CNBC in a phone interview on Friday.
"This trip is about damage limitation. We are almost in crisis mode with tariffs being threatened, so her focus has to be on that," he added.
'Horrible deal'
Merkel is visiting the U.S. in the hope of averting a trade war between the world's largest economy and the European Union (EU). It is thought German officials will try to convince Trump that Washington's trade deficit with Berlin is not just shrinking, but some of the factors behind their trade partnership are out of the chancellor's control.
Nonetheless, Trump is seen as unlikely to shift from his current position that the trading relationship between the two is clearly biased in Europe's favor.
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel before the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017.
Kay Nietfeld | Pool | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel before the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017.
France's Macron had initially sought to persuade the Trump administration to abandon its combative stance on both trade and the Iran nuclear accord. However, some analysts questioned whether his tactile relationship with Trump had yielded any tangible results for the EU.
Eurasia Group's Lichfield said Macron's trip to the U.S. had no implications on the balance of power in Europe because the so-called "Trump-whisperer didn't actually get him to agree to very much."
In fact, Trump said Thursday that Macron "really came to recognize" his viewpoint on the Iran nuclear deal.
"He is viewing, I believe, Iran a lot differently than he did before he walked into the Oval Office and I think that's important," Trump said on Fox News. He went onto reaffirm his belief the Obama administration had agreed to a "horrible deal" to freeze Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Macron and Merkel's trips to the U.S. come shortly before a May 12 deadline, set by Trump, to improve on an international deal to curb Iran's nuclear program.
The president has threatened to pull out from the accord between Tehran and six world powers, signed in 2015 before he took office — unless Germany, France and Britain helped to agree on a follow-up pact by that date.
Germany's 'shrinking' global role
Merkel, who was once seen as the torchbearer for liberal democracy, has not enjoyed a warm alliance with Trump. And since losing ground in September's general election, Germany's premier has been accused of being in a strategic retreat on the international stage. In a recent Der Spiegel editorial, the newspaper lamented Berlin's "incredibly shrinking role" as a global player.
That is in sharp contrast to just two years earlier when, shortly after Trump's election victory in November 2016, former President Barack Obama flew to Germany and hailed Merkel as the "closest international partner" of his eight years in office. Thereafter, domestic newspapers had declared Merkel as the somewhat reluctant "leader of the free world."
— Reuters contributed to this article.
Touching down in the afterglow of her French counterpart's three-day visit, Merkel arrives in Washington to try to find a compromise with the president on a raft of divisive issues.
The Iran nuclear deal, the prospect of U.S. tariffs on European metals products and Berlin's military spending are all politically sensitive topics seen as likely to come up during Merkel's working lunch with Trump.
Eurasia Group's Charles Lichfield said Macron's trip to the U.S. had no implications on the balance of power in Europe because the so-called "Trump-whisperer didn't actually get him to agree to very much."
Sam Meredith | @smeredith19
Published April 27, 2018
CNBC.com
President Donald Trump (R), French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) chat at the start of the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, northern Germany, on July 7, 2017.
John MacDougall | AFP | Getty Images
President Donald Trump (R), French President Emmanuel Macron (L) and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C) chat at the start of the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, northern Germany, on July 7, 2017.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is embarking on a one-day working visit to meet President Donald Trump on Friday, harboring no illusions of matching the "special relationship" formed by France's Emmanuel Macron.
Touching down in the afterglow of her French counterpart's three-day visit, Merkel arrives in Washington to try to find a compromise with the president on a raft of divisive issues.
The Iran nuclear deal, the prospect of U.S. tariffs on European metals products and Berlin's military spending are all politically sensitive topics seen as likely to come up during Merkel's working lunch with Trump.
"Macron has a good personal relationship with Trump and Merkel has a bad relationship with him, but it's not necessarily a problem. In fact, I don't actually think she cares that much about it," Charles Lichfield, Europe associate at Eurasia Group, told CNBC in a phone interview on Friday.
"This trip is about damage limitation. We are almost in crisis mode with tariffs being threatened, so her focus has to be on that," he added.
'Horrible deal'
Merkel is visiting the U.S. in the hope of averting a trade war between the world's largest economy and the European Union (EU). It is thought German officials will try to convince Trump that Washington's trade deficit with Berlin is not just shrinking, but some of the factors behind their trade partnership are out of the chancellor's control.
Nonetheless, Trump is seen as unlikely to shift from his current position that the trading relationship between the two is clearly biased in Europe's favor.
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel before the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017.
Kay Nietfeld | Pool | Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to German Chancellor Angela Merkel before the first working session of the G20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, July 7, 2017.
France's Macron had initially sought to persuade the Trump administration to abandon its combative stance on both trade and the Iran nuclear accord. However, some analysts questioned whether his tactile relationship with Trump had yielded any tangible results for the EU.
Eurasia Group's Lichfield said Macron's trip to the U.S. had no implications on the balance of power in Europe because the so-called "Trump-whisperer didn't actually get him to agree to very much."
In fact, Trump said Thursday that Macron "really came to recognize" his viewpoint on the Iran nuclear deal.
"He is viewing, I believe, Iran a lot differently than he did before he walked into the Oval Office and I think that's important," Trump said on Fox News. He went onto reaffirm his belief the Obama administration had agreed to a "horrible deal" to freeze Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Macron and Merkel's trips to the U.S. come shortly before a May 12 deadline, set by Trump, to improve on an international deal to curb Iran's nuclear program.
The president has threatened to pull out from the accord between Tehran and six world powers, signed in 2015 before he took office — unless Germany, France and Britain helped to agree on a follow-up pact by that date.
Germany's 'shrinking' global role
Merkel, who was once seen as the torchbearer for liberal democracy, has not enjoyed a warm alliance with Trump. And since losing ground in September's general election, Germany's premier has been accused of being in a strategic retreat on the international stage. In a recent Der Spiegel editorial, the newspaper lamented Berlin's "incredibly shrinking role" as a global player.
That is in sharp contrast to just two years earlier when, shortly after Trump's election victory in November 2016, former President Barack Obama flew to Germany and hailed Merkel as the "closest international partner" of his eight years in office. Thereafter, domestic newspapers had declared Merkel as the somewhat reluctant "leader of the free world."
— Reuters contributed to this article.
Kushner Brothers Can’t Seem to Avoid Each Other’s Shadow - Bloomberg
Kushner Brothers Can’t Seem to Avoid Each Other’s Shadow
By David Kocieniewski and Caleb Melby
April 27, 2018, 6:00 PM GMT+10
Archrivals tangled in an effort to remake Jersey City skyline
Charles Kushner says city Democrats treating him unfairly
Buildings stand ahead of the Manhattan skyline in this aerial photograph taken above Weehawken, New Jersey, U.S. Photographer: Craig Warga/Bloomberg
The epic rivalry between Charles and Murray Kushner, wealthy New Jersey brothers with competing real estate empires, has intermittently flared up into lawsuits, fraud allegations and sordid revenge plots.
Now their competition has become entwined in a policy dispute in Jersey City, where both men are trying to remake the skyline.
Charles Kushner, whose son Jared is a senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, this week accused the leaders of the staunchly Democratic city of trying to curry favor with anti-Trump voters by unfairly blocking tax incentives he needs to build two 56-story towers in Journal Square.
Comparing the city’s actions to religious or racial bigotry, Charles Kushner said Jersey City had discriminated against his company, Kushner Cos., by denying it the kind of tax subsidies Jersey City has offered other developers.
Left unsaid -- but widely known in Jersey City real-estate circles -- is that one of the most prominent companies to receive tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from the government is Kushner Real Estate Group, or KRE, which is owned by Charles Kushner’s brother and archrival, Murray.
Building Momentum
Neither Kushner Cos. or KRE responded to questions on the rivalry.
In the early 2000s, when the brothers were still in business together, Murray Kushner began to believe his brother was mismanaging the firm’s funds and sued him. That sparked a legal battle that would eventually send Charles Kushner, at that time a prominent Democratic fundraiser, to prison after it was revealed that he made illegal campaign contributions and he hired a prostitute to entrap his brother-in-law.
KRE was the first major developer to commit to a major project in Jersey City’s blighted Journal Square area, receiving a package in 2013 of more than $40 million in tax breaks and subsidized loans. KRE’s development, called Journal Squared, opened a 54-story high rise last year and broke ground on a second tower that is slated to rise to 72 stories. It has plans for a third building too.
KRE’s project generated such momentum to redevelop the area that by 2015, Charles Kushner’s project, One Journal Square, was on track to receive $10 million in subsidized bonds, another $34 million in tax breaks, plus $59 million from the state of New Jersey. The sites of the two projects are less than a block away.
The rival Kushner real estate companies had long competed for tenants in Jersey City, and, according to two people who spoke with Charles Kushner about the negotiations, he was pleased to receive more public financing than his brother’s project had been allotted.
But that plan began to collapse last year, after the anchor tenant, WeWork Cos., left the project, taking with it $59 million in state subsidies tied to it being a tenant. Kushner Cos. maintains it made the decision not to pursue a partnership with WeWork.
Kushner Cos. also dealt the proposal a self-inflicted wound last spring. Top company officials flew to China to raise money using the controversial EB-5 investment-for-visa program and their pitch featured a photo of Donald Trump, which many viewed as a conflict of interest.
LANDSCAPE SHIFTED
Kushner Cos. said it had been unaware the event promoter made references to Jared Kushner and Trump in the promotional material and said it would no longer seek EB-5 money for the project. (Jared Kushner has sold his interest in the company to family members.)
By the time Kushner Cos. and their partner in the deal, the KABR Group, came back with a revised plan last fall, the political landscape had shifted. Jersey City activists organized protests outside the site and blasted city officials for offering subsides that might enrich the family of the president’s son-in-law.
Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat who faced an election challenge last year, eventually dropped his support for the project. Charles Kushner said this week Fulop once acknowledged that the city was discriminating against Kushner Cos., but Fulop’s spokeswoman said she could not confirm that conversation ever took place.
The spokeswoman, Hannah Peterson, said the mayor’s decision was based on the merits of the redesigned project, which has struggled to obtain financing. She didn’t respond to questions on the rivalry between the brothers.
Earlier this month, Fulop said he hopes another developer comes in to replace Kushner Cos. The mayor also a tweeted that Charles Kushner, his longtime supporter, was out of line.
"There is a sense of entitlement that the developer has towards a subsidy,” he wrote. “We as a city just don’t see it the same way.”
‘Trump Connection’
Others in city government are more sympathetic to Charles Kushner’s complaints.
Michael Yun, a Jersey City councilman who has overseen studies of the city’s subsidies to developers, said, "It’s a good project, and if it weren’t for the Trump connection, I don’t think you’d be seeing people oppose it this way."
Still, he said, it would be inappropriate for Charles Kushner’s company to expect the same level of support that Murray’s got.
"When someone goes to redevelop an area first, they’re taking the most risk and deserve incentives to help make sure it works," Yun said. "But once there’s already an established development there and things are starting to happen, it’s a safer investment. So there’s no reason for such big tax breaks."
By David Kocieniewski and Caleb Melby
April 27, 2018, 6:00 PM GMT+10
Archrivals tangled in an effort to remake Jersey City skyline
Charles Kushner says city Democrats treating him unfairly
Buildings stand ahead of the Manhattan skyline in this aerial photograph taken above Weehawken, New Jersey, U.S. Photographer: Craig Warga/Bloomberg
The epic rivalry between Charles and Murray Kushner, wealthy New Jersey brothers with competing real estate empires, has intermittently flared up into lawsuits, fraud allegations and sordid revenge plots.
Now their competition has become entwined in a policy dispute in Jersey City, where both men are trying to remake the skyline.
Charles Kushner, whose son Jared is a senior adviser and son-in-law to President Donald Trump, this week accused the leaders of the staunchly Democratic city of trying to curry favor with anti-Trump voters by unfairly blocking tax incentives he needs to build two 56-story towers in Journal Square.
Comparing the city’s actions to religious or racial bigotry, Charles Kushner said Jersey City had discriminated against his company, Kushner Cos., by denying it the kind of tax subsidies Jersey City has offered other developers.
Left unsaid -- but widely known in Jersey City real-estate circles -- is that one of the most prominent companies to receive tens of millions of dollars in subsidies from the government is Kushner Real Estate Group, or KRE, which is owned by Charles Kushner’s brother and archrival, Murray.
Building Momentum
Neither Kushner Cos. or KRE responded to questions on the rivalry.
In the early 2000s, when the brothers were still in business together, Murray Kushner began to believe his brother was mismanaging the firm’s funds and sued him. That sparked a legal battle that would eventually send Charles Kushner, at that time a prominent Democratic fundraiser, to prison after it was revealed that he made illegal campaign contributions and he hired a prostitute to entrap his brother-in-law.
KRE was the first major developer to commit to a major project in Jersey City’s blighted Journal Square area, receiving a package in 2013 of more than $40 million in tax breaks and subsidized loans. KRE’s development, called Journal Squared, opened a 54-story high rise last year and broke ground on a second tower that is slated to rise to 72 stories. It has plans for a third building too.
KRE’s project generated such momentum to redevelop the area that by 2015, Charles Kushner’s project, One Journal Square, was on track to receive $10 million in subsidized bonds, another $34 million in tax breaks, plus $59 million from the state of New Jersey. The sites of the two projects are less than a block away.
The rival Kushner real estate companies had long competed for tenants in Jersey City, and, according to two people who spoke with Charles Kushner about the negotiations, he was pleased to receive more public financing than his brother’s project had been allotted.
But that plan began to collapse last year, after the anchor tenant, WeWork Cos., left the project, taking with it $59 million in state subsidies tied to it being a tenant. Kushner Cos. maintains it made the decision not to pursue a partnership with WeWork.
Kushner Cos. also dealt the proposal a self-inflicted wound last spring. Top company officials flew to China to raise money using the controversial EB-5 investment-for-visa program and their pitch featured a photo of Donald Trump, which many viewed as a conflict of interest.
LANDSCAPE SHIFTED
Kushner Cos. said it had been unaware the event promoter made references to Jared Kushner and Trump in the promotional material and said it would no longer seek EB-5 money for the project. (Jared Kushner has sold his interest in the company to family members.)
By the time Kushner Cos. and their partner in the deal, the KABR Group, came back with a revised plan last fall, the political landscape had shifted. Jersey City activists organized protests outside the site and blasted city officials for offering subsides that might enrich the family of the president’s son-in-law.
Mayor Steven Fulop, a Democrat who faced an election challenge last year, eventually dropped his support for the project. Charles Kushner said this week Fulop once acknowledged that the city was discriminating against Kushner Cos., but Fulop’s spokeswoman said she could not confirm that conversation ever took place.
The spokeswoman, Hannah Peterson, said the mayor’s decision was based on the merits of the redesigned project, which has struggled to obtain financing. She didn’t respond to questions on the rivalry between the brothers.
Earlier this month, Fulop said he hopes another developer comes in to replace Kushner Cos. The mayor also a tweeted that Charles Kushner, his longtime supporter, was out of line.
"There is a sense of entitlement that the developer has towards a subsidy,” he wrote. “We as a city just don’t see it the same way.”
‘Trump Connection’
Others in city government are more sympathetic to Charles Kushner’s complaints.
Michael Yun, a Jersey City councilman who has overseen studies of the city’s subsidies to developers, said, "It’s a good project, and if it weren’t for the Trump connection, I don’t think you’d be seeing people oppose it this way."
Still, he said, it would be inappropriate for Charles Kushner’s company to expect the same level of support that Murray’s got.
"When someone goes to redevelop an area first, they’re taking the most risk and deserve incentives to help make sure it works," Yun said. "But once there’s already an established development there and things are starting to happen, it’s a safer investment. So there’s no reason for such big tax breaks."
Does Trump deserve the credit for peace talks with North Korea? - BBC News
Does Trump deserve the credit for peace talks with North Korea?
27 April 2018
Claim: Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agree the US President deserves credit for peace talks with North Korea.
Verdict: Only the historical record will reveal what influenced these talks, but evidence suggests it was the South Koreans who encouraged dialogue with the North, along with pressure from Chinese enforced sanctions.
Leaders of North and South Korea are expected to meet 27 April, for their third leaders' summit since the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953. Then in May or June, Donald Trump is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, for the first ever meeting between a leader of the North and a sitting US president.
After mounting tension and military threats traded between the US and North Korea, the historic talks may bring about a de-escalation of hostilities, as well as a peace treaty to end the 68-year Korean War.
On 4 January 2018, US President Donald Trump tweeted: "With all of the failed 'experts' weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasn't firm, strong and willing to commit our total 'might' against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!"
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said publicly too that President Trump deserved big credit for bringing about talks to discuss peace with the North. "It could be a resulting work of the US-led sanctions and pressure."
US-led sanctions enforced by UN
Since North Korea detonated its first nuclear test in 2006, the US and a number of allies imposed sanctions on North Korea. As well, the United Nations Security Council passed nine rounds of sanctions on North Korea - many of these proposed by the US.
Over the years, these sanctions became more strict. The initial UN sanctions in 2006 banned the supply of heavy weaponry, missile technology and luxury goods. By December 2017, the UN sanctions restricted oil imports, metal, agriculture and demanded the deportation of North Koreans working abroad.
While these most recent sanctions were US-led under the administration of President Trump, it may be China's recent enforcement of UN sanctions that hit North Korea hardest. China accounts for more than 90% of North Korea's trade, and while the Security Council member voted in favour of the UN sanctions against their long-time ally, they rarely upheld those, reports the Council on Foreign Relations. However, in this past year, China appears to have enforced the sanctions.
Having already proved his military capabilities, Mr Kim is now turning his attention to economic growth, says Dr John Nilsson-Wright, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. So while the sanctions didn't stop Mr Kim from developing weapons, this latest development could hinder his economic plan for the long term.
Image copyrightHUW EVANS PICTURE AGENCY
Image caption
In a campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, activists wear masks of President Trump and Mr Kim, in front of the American embassy in Berlin
Tough talks and threats of military action
On 2 January 2018, President Trump tweeted: "North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un just stated that the 'nuclear button is on his desk at all times'. Will someone from his depleted and food-starved regime please inform him that I too have a nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his, and my button works."
On 23 September 2017, President Trump tweeted: "Just heard [the] foreign minister of North Korea speak at [the] UN. If he echoes [the] thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer."
To compare, President Obama, in 2014, warned North Korea that "we don't use our military might to impose these things on others, but we will not hesitate to use our military might to defend our allies and our way of life".
In 2016, President Obama told CBS News North Korea was "erratic enough" and "irresponsible enough that we don't want them getting close".
"We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, the Republic of Korea," he added.
President Bush, for his part, labelled North Korea part of the "axis of evil."
America has for years used words and threats of military might.
Kim Yo Jong (top right), sister of the North Korean leader, attends the Olympics in South Korea, along with President Moon Jae-in (bottom left)
The influence of South Korean engagement
Two presidents prior to Moon Jae-in, Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) took a hard-line approach to North Korea. The next president, Park Geun-hye (2013-2017), promised engagement with the North, a strategy that ended in early 2016 following missile and nuclear tests.
In his inauguration speech, Mr Moon said he would "do everything I can to build peace on the Korean peninsula".
This is a return to the Sunshine Policy of Presidents Kim Dae-Jung (1999-2003) and Roh Moo-Hyun (2003-2008), who were the only other two South Korean presidents to meet North Korean leadership - during the Inter-Korean Summits of 2000 and 2007. Kim Dae-jung won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
"More credit should go to the South Koreans, because they actually made sure to have the North Koreans come to the Olympics and that was organised very very quickly," said senior lecturer Dr Virginie Grzelczyk, of Aston University. "The invitation to have the North Korean delegation and Kim Jong-un's sister…has been really critical to organise the summit that we are going to see at the end of the week."
So why is the South giving credit to Trump?
South Korea is acting strategically, says Dr Grzelczyk, to bring the Americans around to a place of dialogue "because both Koreas have at some point, been perplexed and concerned by American policy".
27 April 2018
Claim: Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in agree the US President deserves credit for peace talks with North Korea.
Verdict: Only the historical record will reveal what influenced these talks, but evidence suggests it was the South Koreans who encouraged dialogue with the North, along with pressure from Chinese enforced sanctions.
Leaders of North and South Korea are expected to meet 27 April, for their third leaders' summit since the Korean War armistice was signed in 1953. Then in May or June, Donald Trump is expected to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, for the first ever meeting between a leader of the North and a sitting US president.
After mounting tension and military threats traded between the US and North Korea, the historic talks may bring about a de-escalation of hostilities, as well as a peace treaty to end the 68-year Korean War.
On 4 January 2018, US President Donald Trump tweeted: "With all of the failed 'experts' weighing in, does anybody really believe that talks and dialogue would be going on between North and South Korea right now if I wasn't firm, strong and willing to commit our total 'might' against the North. Fools, but talks are a good thing!"
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said publicly too that President Trump deserved big credit for bringing about talks to discuss peace with the North. "It could be a resulting work of the US-led sanctions and pressure."
US-led sanctions enforced by UN
Since North Korea detonated its first nuclear test in 2006, the US and a number of allies imposed sanctions on North Korea. As well, the United Nations Security Council passed nine rounds of sanctions on North Korea - many of these proposed by the US.
Over the years, these sanctions became more strict. The initial UN sanctions in 2006 banned the supply of heavy weaponry, missile technology and luxury goods. By December 2017, the UN sanctions restricted oil imports, metal, agriculture and demanded the deportation of North Koreans working abroad.
While these most recent sanctions were US-led under the administration of President Trump, it may be China's recent enforcement of UN sanctions that hit North Korea hardest. China accounts for more than 90% of North Korea's trade, and while the Security Council member voted in favour of the UN sanctions against their long-time ally, they rarely upheld those, reports the Council on Foreign Relations. However, in this past year, China appears to have enforced the sanctions.
Having already proved his military capabilities, Mr Kim is now turning his attention to economic growth, says Dr John Nilsson-Wright, a senior research fellow at Chatham House. So while the sanctions didn't stop Mr Kim from developing weapons, this latest development could hinder his economic plan for the long term.
Image copyrightHUW EVANS PICTURE AGENCY
Image caption
In a campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, activists wear masks of President Trump and Mr Kim, in front of the American embassy in Berlin
Tough talks and threats of military action
On 2 January 2018, President Trump tweeted: "North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un just stated that the 'nuclear button is on his desk at all times'. Will someone from his depleted and food-starved regime please inform him that I too have a nuclear button, but it is a much bigger and more powerful one than his, and my button works."
On 23 September 2017, President Trump tweeted: "Just heard [the] foreign minister of North Korea speak at [the] UN. If he echoes [the] thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won't be around much longer."
To compare, President Obama, in 2014, warned North Korea that "we don't use our military might to impose these things on others, but we will not hesitate to use our military might to defend our allies and our way of life".
In 2016, President Obama told CBS News North Korea was "erratic enough" and "irresponsible enough that we don't want them getting close".
"We could, obviously, destroy North Korea with our arsenals. But aside from the humanitarian costs of that, they are right next door to our vital ally, the Republic of Korea," he added.
President Bush, for his part, labelled North Korea part of the "axis of evil."
America has for years used words and threats of military might.
Kim Yo Jong (top right), sister of the North Korean leader, attends the Olympics in South Korea, along with President Moon Jae-in (bottom left)
The influence of South Korean engagement
Two presidents prior to Moon Jae-in, Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) took a hard-line approach to North Korea. The next president, Park Geun-hye (2013-2017), promised engagement with the North, a strategy that ended in early 2016 following missile and nuclear tests.
In his inauguration speech, Mr Moon said he would "do everything I can to build peace on the Korean peninsula".
This is a return to the Sunshine Policy of Presidents Kim Dae-Jung (1999-2003) and Roh Moo-Hyun (2003-2008), who were the only other two South Korean presidents to meet North Korean leadership - during the Inter-Korean Summits of 2000 and 2007. Kim Dae-jung won a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts.
"More credit should go to the South Koreans, because they actually made sure to have the North Koreans come to the Olympics and that was organised very very quickly," said senior lecturer Dr Virginie Grzelczyk, of Aston University. "The invitation to have the North Korean delegation and Kim Jong-un's sister…has been really critical to organise the summit that we are going to see at the end of the week."
So why is the South giving credit to Trump?
South Korea is acting strategically, says Dr Grzelczyk, to bring the Americans around to a place of dialogue "because both Koreas have at some point, been perplexed and concerned by American policy".
North Korea crisis in 300 words - BBC News
April 27, 2018
North Korea crisis in 300 words
The North Korean stand-off is a crisis that, at worst, threatens nuclear war. The sudden prospect of direct talks with the US might mean there's a chance at peace, but it's complicated. Let's take a step back.
Why does North Korea want nuclear weapons?
The Korean peninsula was divided after World War Two and the communist North developed into a Stalinesque authoritarian system.
Isolated on the global stage, it says nuclear weapons are its only deterrent against an outside world seeking to destroy it.
Could they carry out a nuclear attack?
Probably, but likely won't.
North Korea has carried out six nuclear tests. One, it says, was a hydrogen bomb.
It claims, though this remains unverified, to have developed a nuclear bomb small enough to be carried by a long-range missile.
It has also has a ballistic missile that experts believe could reach the US, Pyongyang's main adversary.
In response the UN, the US, the EU and have implemented increasingly tough sanctions.
Why can't Kim just be removed?
The North has missiles aimed at the South and Japan. A pre-emptive strike against Pyongyang could trigger devastating retaliation. It would also kill countless North Koreans.
As the biggest Asian power, China is concerned about regime collapse, and that a unified Korea would bring US forces currently stationed in the South directly to its border.
An unprecedented turnaround?
Previous attempts to negotiate aid-for-disarmament deals have failed.
But in January, the North embarked on direct talks with Seoul, attended the Winter Olympics in South Korea and in April the two leaders met for a historic inter-Korean summit.
Pyongyang also offered direct talks with the US - an offer Mr Trump accepted - and ordered a halt to nuclear and missile tests.
Talks between the two would be unprecedented, but the details, agenda and timing of the summit are yet to be confirmed.
Want to know more?
Why has Kim Jong-un halted North Korean tests now?
Did sanctions push N Korea into US talks?
The political gamble of the 21st Century
North Korea-Trump talks in 400 words
Have the Olympics repaired North-South Korea relations?
What are North Korea's other WMDs?
What missiles does North Korea have?
How advanced is North Korea's nuclear programme?
What North Korea missile tests achieved
North Korea crisis in 300 words
The North Korean stand-off is a crisis that, at worst, threatens nuclear war. The sudden prospect of direct talks with the US might mean there's a chance at peace, but it's complicated. Let's take a step back.
Why does North Korea want nuclear weapons?
The Korean peninsula was divided after World War Two and the communist North developed into a Stalinesque authoritarian system.
Isolated on the global stage, it says nuclear weapons are its only deterrent against an outside world seeking to destroy it.
Could they carry out a nuclear attack?
Probably, but likely won't.
North Korea has carried out six nuclear tests. One, it says, was a hydrogen bomb.
It claims, though this remains unverified, to have developed a nuclear bomb small enough to be carried by a long-range missile.
It has also has a ballistic missile that experts believe could reach the US, Pyongyang's main adversary.
In response the UN, the US, the EU and have implemented increasingly tough sanctions.
Why can't Kim just be removed?
The North has missiles aimed at the South and Japan. A pre-emptive strike against Pyongyang could trigger devastating retaliation. It would also kill countless North Koreans.
As the biggest Asian power, China is concerned about regime collapse, and that a unified Korea would bring US forces currently stationed in the South directly to its border.
An unprecedented turnaround?
Previous attempts to negotiate aid-for-disarmament deals have failed.
But in January, the North embarked on direct talks with Seoul, attended the Winter Olympics in South Korea and in April the two leaders met for a historic inter-Korean summit.
Pyongyang also offered direct talks with the US - an offer Mr Trump accepted - and ordered a halt to nuclear and missile tests.
Talks between the two would be unprecedented, but the details, agenda and timing of the summit are yet to be confirmed.
Want to know more?
Why has Kim Jong-un halted North Korean tests now?
Did sanctions push N Korea into US talks?
The political gamble of the 21st Century
North Korea-Trump talks in 400 words
Have the Olympics repaired North-South Korea relations?
What are North Korea's other WMDs?
What missiles does North Korea have?
How advanced is North Korea's nuclear programme?
What North Korea missile tests achieved
Koreas make nuclear pledge after summit - BBC News
April 27, 2018
Koreas make nuclear pledge after summit
Kim Jong-un makes pledge for peace with South Korea
The leaders of North and South Korea have agreed to work to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons after holding a historic summit.
The announcement was made by the North's Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in of South Korea after talks at the border.
The two also agreed to push towards turning the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty this year.
It comes just months after warlike rhetoric from North Korea.
LIVE: Latest updates from the historic summit
The confidantes Kim brought along to the summit
Details of how denuclearisation would be achieved were not made clear and many analysts remain sceptical about the North's apparent enthusiasm for engagement.
Following discussions at the summit on Friday, Mr Kim said that both leaders had agreed to co-ordinate closely to ensure that there was not a repeat of the region's "unfortunate history" in which previous progress had "fizzled out".
"There may be backlash, hardship and frustration," he said, adding: "A victory cannot be achieved without pain."
Other points the leaders agreed on in a joint statement were:
An end to "hostile activities" between the two nations
Changing the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that divides the country into a "peace zone" by ceasing propaganda broadcasts
An arms reduction in the region pending the easing of military tension
To push for three-way talks involving the US and China
Organising a reunion of families left divided by the war
Connecting and modernising railways and roads across the border
Further joint participation in sporting events, including this year's Asian Games
How the summit unfolded
The leaders were met on Friday by an honour guard in traditional costume on the South Korean side. The pair walked to the Peace House in Panmunjom, a military compound in the DMZ between the two countries.
Mr Kim then invited the South Korean president to step briefly across the demarcation line into North Korea, before the pair stepped back into South Korea - all the while holding hands.
It was an apparently unscripted moment during a highly choreographed sequence of events.
The meeting is aimed at ending the decades-long conflict on the peninsula
When the first session ended, the pair separated for lunch and Mr Kim returned to the North in a heavily guarded black limousine.
Diplomacy on the menu: How food can shape politics
When he returned in the afternoon, the two leaders took part in a ceremony consisting of the planting of a pine tree using soil and water from both countries.
The pair shovelled soil on the roots of the tree and unveiled a stone marker featuring their names, official titles and a message that read: "Planting peace and prosperity."
Mr Kim returns to the North in a car surrounded by jogging bodyguards
A banquet will later be held on the South's side where Mr Kim will be served the Swiss potato dish rösti - a nod to his time studying in Switzerland - along with the North's signature dish of cold noodles, and a North Korean liquor.
Kim's sister and North Korea's secret weapon
Mr Kim arrived for the symbolic discussions on Friday accompanied by nine officials, including his powerful and influential sister Kim Yo-jong.
Koreas make nuclear pledge after summit
Kim Jong-un makes pledge for peace with South Korea
The leaders of North and South Korea have agreed to work to rid the peninsula of nuclear weapons after holding a historic summit.
The announcement was made by the North's Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in of South Korea after talks at the border.
The two also agreed to push towards turning the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 into a peace treaty this year.
It comes just months after warlike rhetoric from North Korea.
LIVE: Latest updates from the historic summit
The confidantes Kim brought along to the summit
Details of how denuclearisation would be achieved were not made clear and many analysts remain sceptical about the North's apparent enthusiasm for engagement.
Following discussions at the summit on Friday, Mr Kim said that both leaders had agreed to co-ordinate closely to ensure that there was not a repeat of the region's "unfortunate history" in which previous progress had "fizzled out".
"There may be backlash, hardship and frustration," he said, adding: "A victory cannot be achieved without pain."
Other points the leaders agreed on in a joint statement were:
An end to "hostile activities" between the two nations
Changing the demilitarised zone (DMZ) that divides the country into a "peace zone" by ceasing propaganda broadcasts
An arms reduction in the region pending the easing of military tension
To push for three-way talks involving the US and China
Organising a reunion of families left divided by the war
Connecting and modernising railways and roads across the border
Further joint participation in sporting events, including this year's Asian Games
How the summit unfolded
The leaders were met on Friday by an honour guard in traditional costume on the South Korean side. The pair walked to the Peace House in Panmunjom, a military compound in the DMZ between the two countries.
Mr Kim then invited the South Korean president to step briefly across the demarcation line into North Korea, before the pair stepped back into South Korea - all the while holding hands.
It was an apparently unscripted moment during a highly choreographed sequence of events.
The meeting is aimed at ending the decades-long conflict on the peninsula
When the first session ended, the pair separated for lunch and Mr Kim returned to the North in a heavily guarded black limousine.
Diplomacy on the menu: How food can shape politics
When he returned in the afternoon, the two leaders took part in a ceremony consisting of the planting of a pine tree using soil and water from both countries.
The pair shovelled soil on the roots of the tree and unveiled a stone marker featuring their names, official titles and a message that read: "Planting peace and prosperity."
Mr Kim returns to the North in a car surrounded by jogging bodyguards
A banquet will later be held on the South's side where Mr Kim will be served the Swiss potato dish rösti - a nod to his time studying in Switzerland - along with the North's signature dish of cold noodles, and a North Korean liquor.
Kim's sister and North Korea's secret weapon
Mr Kim arrived for the symbolic discussions on Friday accompanied by nine officials, including his powerful and influential sister Kim Yo-jong.
Thursday, April 26, 2018
James Comey's Book Sold 600,000 Copies In A Week, But Isn't The Next 'Fire And Fury' (Yet) - Forbes
Media & Entertainment #LitLife
APR 25, 2018 @ 11:50 AM 882 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
James Comey's Book Sold 600,000 Copies In A Week, But Isn't The Next 'Fire And Fury' (Yet)
Adam Rowe , CONTRIBUTOR
I write about the future of books and the business of storytelling.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Former FBI director James Comey poses with his book "A Higher Loyalty" (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Former FBI Director James Comey's book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week of sales, according to its publisher. That's 400,000 copies more than Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury sold in its first week, but that doesn't mean Comey's book will become the next Trump-critical blockbuster: Fire and Fury has been on the New York Times bestseller lists for 15 weeks and has sold more than 2 million copies to date.
Comey's nonfiction book — published through Macmillan’s Flatiron Books in a reported $2 million deal — pre-sold nearly 200,000 copies before its release and consistently topped Amazon's hourly-updated bestseller list following its April 17 release in the U.S. and U.K., as well as topping lists from Nielsen BookScan and iBooks on its first week.
The Times' hardcover nonfiction list has seen an explicitly Trump-related book at the No. 1 position every week since the middle of January 2018, and the not-exactly-stable publishing industry isn't missing the opportunity to capitalize on the political climate. Random House inked a deal last week for #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line, written by two survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Fl., David and Lauren Hogg, to be published June 5. Where does James Comey's book fall in the ranking of Trump-centric bestsellers?
Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury hit an early snag that definitely won't trip up Comey: Macmillan's initial print run consisted of 150,000 copies, a number far below demand as evidenced by the more than 2 million units that have been sold to date across all formats. This wasn't an oversight as much as an example of how difficult print sales can be to predict. Nevertheless, Macmillan took away its lesson — Trump exposés sell like hotcakes in 2018 — and have given A Higher Loyalty a 850,000-copy run, the largest Macmillan has printed so far this year. Given A Higher Loyalty pre-sales, it appears printing 850,000 copies was a smart move.
A few warning signs hint that Comey's book may simply be a success rather than a blockbuster. On Sunday April 15, George Stephanopoulos's much-touted ABC News interview with Comey averaged 9.8 million viewers: A strong showing, but lower than CBS's Academy of Country Music Awards' average of 12.1 million viewers that same evening, and well below Stormy Daniels' appearance on 60 Minutes, which drew an average of more than 22 million viewers. One attendant to a DC bookstore's midnight release event for A Higher Loyalty noted the smaller turnout, calling it a "different experience" in relation to the same store's release of Fire and Fury.
But the most meaningful metric that could prove whether Comey can compete with Wolff is how long A Higher Loyalty can stay on the bestseller lists, not whether it makes it there at all. Time magazine recently crunched the numbers, ranking The Times' nonfiction list of bestsellers since November 2016, and picking out every book "explicitly about Trump." They found that, since mid-January, every top best-seller has been about Trump: Fire and Fury topped the list in January and Michael Isikoff and David Corn's Russian Roulette beat it in March before losing its spot to Jennifer Palmieri's Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World.
So, is Comey's book objectively as popular as Wolff's take on the Trump administration? Not yet. Only the coming weeks will confirm whether A Higher Loyalty has the staying power to qualify as successor to Wolff's Fire and Fury, which has now passed its 15th week on The Times' hardcover nonfiction list.
One thing's for sure: Comey seems happy to feed the narrative that he's the underdog in the publishing industry's 2018-era Trump bump. "I don't crave to be known," he said during a Thursday interview for The New Yorker Radio Hour, adding that he'd be more comfortable "not doing something like this."
APR 25, 2018 @ 11:50 AM 882 The Little Black Book of Billionaire Secrets
James Comey's Book Sold 600,000 Copies In A Week, But Isn't The Next 'Fire And Fury' (Yet)
Adam Rowe , CONTRIBUTOR
I write about the future of books and the business of storytelling.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.
Former FBI director James Comey poses with his book "A Higher Loyalty" (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File)
Former FBI Director James Comey's book A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, sold more than 600,000 copies in its first week of sales, according to its publisher. That's 400,000 copies more than Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury sold in its first week, but that doesn't mean Comey's book will become the next Trump-critical blockbuster: Fire and Fury has been on the New York Times bestseller lists for 15 weeks and has sold more than 2 million copies to date.
Comey's nonfiction book — published through Macmillan’s Flatiron Books in a reported $2 million deal — pre-sold nearly 200,000 copies before its release and consistently topped Amazon's hourly-updated bestseller list following its April 17 release in the U.S. and U.K., as well as topping lists from Nielsen BookScan and iBooks on its first week.
The Times' hardcover nonfiction list has seen an explicitly Trump-related book at the No. 1 position every week since the middle of January 2018, and the not-exactly-stable publishing industry isn't missing the opportunity to capitalize on the political climate. Random House inked a deal last week for #NeverAgain: A New Generation Draws the Line, written by two survivors of the shooting in Parkland, Fl., David and Lauren Hogg, to be published June 5. Where does James Comey's book fall in the ranking of Trump-centric bestsellers?
Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury hit an early snag that definitely won't trip up Comey: Macmillan's initial print run consisted of 150,000 copies, a number far below demand as evidenced by the more than 2 million units that have been sold to date across all formats. This wasn't an oversight as much as an example of how difficult print sales can be to predict. Nevertheless, Macmillan took away its lesson — Trump exposés sell like hotcakes in 2018 — and have given A Higher Loyalty a 850,000-copy run, the largest Macmillan has printed so far this year. Given A Higher Loyalty pre-sales, it appears printing 850,000 copies was a smart move.
A few warning signs hint that Comey's book may simply be a success rather than a blockbuster. On Sunday April 15, George Stephanopoulos's much-touted ABC News interview with Comey averaged 9.8 million viewers: A strong showing, but lower than CBS's Academy of Country Music Awards' average of 12.1 million viewers that same evening, and well below Stormy Daniels' appearance on 60 Minutes, which drew an average of more than 22 million viewers. One attendant to a DC bookstore's midnight release event for A Higher Loyalty noted the smaller turnout, calling it a "different experience" in relation to the same store's release of Fire and Fury.
But the most meaningful metric that could prove whether Comey can compete with Wolff is how long A Higher Loyalty can stay on the bestseller lists, not whether it makes it there at all. Time magazine recently crunched the numbers, ranking The Times' nonfiction list of bestsellers since November 2016, and picking out every book "explicitly about Trump." They found that, since mid-January, every top best-seller has been about Trump: Fire and Fury topped the list in January and Michael Isikoff and David Corn's Russian Roulette beat it in March before losing its spot to Jennifer Palmieri's Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World.
So, is Comey's book objectively as popular as Wolff's take on the Trump administration? Not yet. Only the coming weeks will confirm whether A Higher Loyalty has the staying power to qualify as successor to Wolff's Fire and Fury, which has now passed its 15th week on The Times' hardcover nonfiction list.
One thing's for sure: Comey seems happy to feed the narrative that he's the underdog in the publishing industry's 2018-era Trump bump. "I don't crave to be known," he said during a Thursday interview for The New Yorker Radio Hour, adding that he'd be more comfortable "not doing something like this."
Trump's VA nominee Ronny Jackson in talks to withdraw after new allegations raised - NBC News
Trump's VA nominee Ronny Jackson in talks to withdraw after new allegations raised
The development comes as congressional Democrats released new allegations of improper conduct involving Jackson.
by Kasie Hunt, Geoff Bennett, Kristen Welker, Adam Edelman and Rebecca Shabad / Apr.26.2018 / 1:20 AM ET / Updated 2:54 PM ET
Dr. Ronny Jackson arrives for a meeting with Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., at his office on Capitol Hill on April 17.Joshua Roberts / Reuters
WASHINGTON — Ronny Jackson, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, has grown frustrated with the process and is in active discussions with senior White House officials about withdrawing his name from consideration for the cabinet post, two sources with knowledge of the conversations said.
A decision about Jackson's future could come as early as Wednesday night or Thursday, one source said.
The development comes as congressional Democrats released additional details Wednesday on allegations of improper conduct involving Jackson who said earlier in the day that he has no intention of backing out.
New allegations emerge against VA nominee Ronny Jackson
Democrats on the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs spoke to nearly two dozen current and former colleagues of Jackson — most of whom the committee said are still in uniform — and said those interviewed "raised serious concerns about Jackson’s temperament and ethics, and cast doubt on his ability to lead the second-largest agency in government."
According to a two-page summary of those interviews released by the panel’s staff Wednesday, the White House medical unit had "questionable record keeping" for the medications it was distributing under Jackson's leadership. On one occasion, Jackson was said to have provided a "large supply" of the opioid drug Percocet to a staffer for the White House Military Office, which threw the office "into a panic" because it didn't know where the drugs went.
In addition to concerns about his prescribing practices, the summary noted "multiple incidents of drunkenness on duty," including one instance when Jackson could not be reached when he was needed "because he was passed out drunk in his hotel room." It added that Jackson once got drunk at a Secret Service going-away party and "wrecked a government vehicle." It did not note the year of the incident.
Jackson denied that specific allegation Wednesday, telling NBC News, "I never wrecked a car," and said that should be pretty easy to prove. He also claimed that he did not know where the allegations were coming from, and added that he is "still moving ahead as planned" with his nomination.
Earlier in the day, the White House rallied around Jackson as the embattled doctor continued to face allegations of impropriety.
Marc Short, Trump’s top legislative affairs aide, told reporters outside the White House that Jackson deserved a fair hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs and said the allegations against the doctor were politically motivated. He also indicated that Jackson has no plans to withdraw.
Tester on Ronny Jackson allegations: 'There's more that come forth everyday'
02:20
"We all look at allegations, but I think you have to question if there is a process within the Department of Defense for active military people to bring those concerns," Short said, noting that concerns were instead raised to the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who has been vocal in sharing his findings.
Short added he thought it was unfair for Tester to have dubbed Jackson, the White House physician who shared the results of Trump's annual physical with the press earlier this year, the "candy man" — a reference to his prescription practices — in media interviews.
"Every year they come in and they do a review of the White House physician’s office on things like prescriptions, and every year they have said that he is totally in compliance with what he has been prescribing," Short said.
According to the summary of interviews released Wednesday, multiple people said Jackson was known as the "candy man" among White House staff because they said he would provide prescription drugs without paperwork.
Jackson also engaged in a pattern of handing out Ambien to help people go to sleep on Air Force One and distributing Provigil to help people wake up, says the summary, which added that he did not triage patients' medical history when giving those drugs out.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that Jackson's character had been praised by three administrations and that he underwent the standard vetting process before Trump selected him to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. She said she is "not aware" of any allegations made against the doctor prior to his nomination.
Iraq War veteran: Ronny Jackson scandal is 'bonkers'
05:38
Meanwhile, Trump — who showed support for Jackson a day earlier, despite opening the door for him to withdraw his nomination — met with Jackson for a private Oval Office meeting Tuesday, and asked his nominee how he wanted to address the allegations, according to a White House official.
The official told NBC News that Jackson told Trump that the allegations are untrue and misleading and that he wants to make his case, which the president encouraged him to do.
Tester defended releasing the summary of allegations in an interview Wednesday, saying that the document was also shared with the office of the committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Johnny Isakson.
"So we gave it to them and then we gave it to other people and you guys need to have it too," Tester said on MSNBC's "Meet the Press Daily," adding that his staff was sharing information as quickly as possible with his GOP counterpart.
"These aren't my accusations, these are accusations from retired and active-duty military personnel that have come to us. We are just trying to follow up and see what is true and what is not," Tester said.
Jackson's confirmation hearing had been scheduled for Wednesday, but was postponed amid concerns over the allegations.
Asked Wednesday whether the White House is pushing to reschedule the hearing, Sanders told reporters, "We are continuing to work with members on the Hill." Tester also did not rule out the possibility that Jackson could still receive a hearing.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said Jackson denied allegations of a hostile workplace while working as the White House physician, and told Moran that he has never had a drink while on duty.
The development comes as congressional Democrats released new allegations of improper conduct involving Jackson.
by Kasie Hunt, Geoff Bennett, Kristen Welker, Adam Edelman and Rebecca Shabad / Apr.26.2018 / 1:20 AM ET / Updated 2:54 PM ET
Dr. Ronny Jackson arrives for a meeting with Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., at his office on Capitol Hill on April 17.Joshua Roberts / Reuters
WASHINGTON — Ronny Jackson, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, has grown frustrated with the process and is in active discussions with senior White House officials about withdrawing his name from consideration for the cabinet post, two sources with knowledge of the conversations said.
A decision about Jackson's future could come as early as Wednesday night or Thursday, one source said.
The development comes as congressional Democrats released additional details Wednesday on allegations of improper conduct involving Jackson who said earlier in the day that he has no intention of backing out.
New allegations emerge against VA nominee Ronny Jackson
Democrats on the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs spoke to nearly two dozen current and former colleagues of Jackson — most of whom the committee said are still in uniform — and said those interviewed "raised serious concerns about Jackson’s temperament and ethics, and cast doubt on his ability to lead the second-largest agency in government."
According to a two-page summary of those interviews released by the panel’s staff Wednesday, the White House medical unit had "questionable record keeping" for the medications it was distributing under Jackson's leadership. On one occasion, Jackson was said to have provided a "large supply" of the opioid drug Percocet to a staffer for the White House Military Office, which threw the office "into a panic" because it didn't know where the drugs went.
In addition to concerns about his prescribing practices, the summary noted "multiple incidents of drunkenness on duty," including one instance when Jackson could not be reached when he was needed "because he was passed out drunk in his hotel room." It added that Jackson once got drunk at a Secret Service going-away party and "wrecked a government vehicle." It did not note the year of the incident.
Jackson denied that specific allegation Wednesday, telling NBC News, "I never wrecked a car," and said that should be pretty easy to prove. He also claimed that he did not know where the allegations were coming from, and added that he is "still moving ahead as planned" with his nomination.
Earlier in the day, the White House rallied around Jackson as the embattled doctor continued to face allegations of impropriety.
Marc Short, Trump’s top legislative affairs aide, told reporters outside the White House that Jackson deserved a fair hearing before the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs and said the allegations against the doctor were politically motivated. He also indicated that Jackson has no plans to withdraw.
Tester on Ronny Jackson allegations: 'There's more that come forth everyday'
02:20
"We all look at allegations, but I think you have to question if there is a process within the Department of Defense for active military people to bring those concerns," Short said, noting that concerns were instead raised to the ranking member of the Veterans' Affairs Committee, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., who has been vocal in sharing his findings.
Short added he thought it was unfair for Tester to have dubbed Jackson, the White House physician who shared the results of Trump's annual physical with the press earlier this year, the "candy man" — a reference to his prescription practices — in media interviews.
"Every year they come in and they do a review of the White House physician’s office on things like prescriptions, and every year they have said that he is totally in compliance with what he has been prescribing," Short said.
According to the summary of interviews released Wednesday, multiple people said Jackson was known as the "candy man" among White House staff because they said he would provide prescription drugs without paperwork.
Jackson also engaged in a pattern of handing out Ambien to help people go to sleep on Air Force One and distributing Provigil to help people wake up, says the summary, which added that he did not triage patients' medical history when giving those drugs out.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said Wednesday that Jackson's character had been praised by three administrations and that he underwent the standard vetting process before Trump selected him to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs. She said she is "not aware" of any allegations made against the doctor prior to his nomination.
Iraq War veteran: Ronny Jackson scandal is 'bonkers'
05:38
Meanwhile, Trump — who showed support for Jackson a day earlier, despite opening the door for him to withdraw his nomination — met with Jackson for a private Oval Office meeting Tuesday, and asked his nominee how he wanted to address the allegations, according to a White House official.
The official told NBC News that Jackson told Trump that the allegations are untrue and misleading and that he wants to make his case, which the president encouraged him to do.
Tester defended releasing the summary of allegations in an interview Wednesday, saying that the document was also shared with the office of the committee's Republican chairman, Sen. Johnny Isakson.
"So we gave it to them and then we gave it to other people and you guys need to have it too," Tester said on MSNBC's "Meet the Press Daily," adding that his staff was sharing information as quickly as possible with his GOP counterpart.
"These aren't my accusations, these are accusations from retired and active-duty military personnel that have come to us. We are just trying to follow up and see what is true and what is not," Tester said.
Jackson's confirmation hearing had been scheduled for Wednesday, but was postponed amid concerns over the allegations.
Asked Wednesday whether the White House is pushing to reschedule the hearing, Sanders told reporters, "We are continuing to work with members on the Hill." Tester also did not rule out the possibility that Jackson could still receive a hearing.
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., said Jackson denied allegations of a hostile workplace while working as the White House physician, and told Moran that he has never had a drink while on duty.
Golden State Killer: DNA links ex-officer to California cold cases - BBC News
Golden State Killer: DNA links ex-officer to California cold cases
25 April 2018
The charges were announced at a news conference in Sacramento
California police have arrested a former police officer for a notorious spree of murders, rapes and burglaries in the 1970s and 80s.
Sacramento police say they arrested suspect Joseph James DeAngelo, 72.
The suspect has been living in the Sacramento area and was identified after new efforts to solve the case, investigators say.
Police blame the so-called Golden State Killer for 12 murders, 51 rapes and more than 120 burglaries.
Mr DeAngelo is being held on suspicion of four counts of murder - the 1978 deaths of Brian and Katie Maggiore in Sacramento and the 1980 killings of Charlene and Lyman Smith in Ventura County.
Prosecutors say additional charges are likely to follow.
What did police say?
Police had been monitoring the suspect and used "discarded DNA" to match him to the crimes, according to Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones.
Media captionGolden State Killer: 'A staggering crime spree'
Announcing the arrest, Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said: "The answer has always been in Sacramento."
"The magnitude of this case demanded that it be solved," she added.
Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten said that prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty.
Two years ago the FBI offered a $50,000 (£36,000) reward to anyone who could help crack the case.
Crime spree that terrorised communities
By James Cook, BBC News Los Angeles correspondent
After four decades of frustration for detectives, it turned out the suspect had been living under their noses all along.
"We found the needle in the haystack and it was right here in Sacramento," said district attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
Joseph James DeAngelo had apparently been living an ordinary life on a quiet suburban street, a former police officer with grown-up children who was "very surprised" when he was arrested and taken into custody.
Details of his alleged crimes are deeply disturbing and collective psychological scars endure.
Many police officers and prosecutors involved in the case vividly recall the terror of the crime spree in their communities.
"Everyone was afraid," said FBI special agent Marcus Knutson, who was born and raised in Sacramento, as he announced a fresh appeal for information on the case two years ago.
"We had people sleeping with shotguns, we had people purchasing dogs. People were concerned, and they had a right to be. This guy was terrorising the community. He did horrible things."
What do we know about the accused?
According to the Sacramento Bee newspaper, he had been living with his daughter and granddaughter in the city's Citrus Heights neighbourhood.
He was fired from the Auburn Police Department in 1979 after he was charged with shoplifting, according to the Auburn Journal.
Billy Jensen
✔
@Billyjensen
If you’ve been following the Golden State Killer case, stay tuned. We will be having a rather large announcement tomorrow. #michellemcnamara #IllBeGoneInTheDark #stepintothelight
4:52 PM - Apr 25, 2018 · Chicago, IL
Police say it was "very likely" that he was committing these crimes while employed as a police officer.
He had also worked as an officer in Exeter, California from 1973 to 1976, during a time when several crimes were committed there, police say.
What reaction has there been?
Jane Carson-Sandler, who was the rapist's fifth victim in October 1976, told the Island Packet newspaper that detectives had emailed her on Wednesday to inform her of the arrest.
"I just found out this morning," she said. "I'm overwhelmed with joy. I've been crying, sobbing."
The case was investigated by author Michelle McNamara for her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark. McNamara died before the book could be published.
Her co-author, Billy Jensen, tweeted on Tuesday night to say there would be a "rather large announcement tomorrow".
Another contributor to the book, Paul Haynes, said: "Stunned. Excited. No other words right now."
Skip Twitter post by @ThePaulOfHaynes
Paul Haynes
@ThePaulOfHaynes
Stunned. Excited. No other words right now.
10:59 PM - Apr 25, 2018
What were the crimes?
The Golden State Killer, also known as the East Area Rapist, Original Night Stalker, and the Diamond Knot Killer is believed to have carried out rapes and murders between 1976 and 1986, killing girls and women aged between 12 and 41.
Prosecutors say the "reign of terror" began in Sacramento and spread to San Francisco and then on to central and southern California. Links between the cases were established by DNA evidence, police say.
A police reward poster shows photofit pictures of the suspect
The attacker broke into homes at night and then tied up and raped his female victims.
Before fleeing he stole items such as cash, jewellery and identification.
The last case to be linked to the Golden State Killer was the rape and murder of an 18-year-old woman in Irvine, Orange County, in May 1986.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said the suspect had been called many names but added: "Today, it's our pleasure to call him 'defendant'."
25 April 2018
The charges were announced at a news conference in Sacramento
California police have arrested a former police officer for a notorious spree of murders, rapes and burglaries in the 1970s and 80s.
Sacramento police say they arrested suspect Joseph James DeAngelo, 72.
The suspect has been living in the Sacramento area and was identified after new efforts to solve the case, investigators say.
Police blame the so-called Golden State Killer for 12 murders, 51 rapes and more than 120 burglaries.
Mr DeAngelo is being held on suspicion of four counts of murder - the 1978 deaths of Brian and Katie Maggiore in Sacramento and the 1980 killings of Charlene and Lyman Smith in Ventura County.
Prosecutors say additional charges are likely to follow.
What did police say?
Police had been monitoring the suspect and used "discarded DNA" to match him to the crimes, according to Sacramento County Sheriff Scott Jones.
Media captionGolden State Killer: 'A staggering crime spree'
Announcing the arrest, Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert said: "The answer has always been in Sacramento."
"The magnitude of this case demanded that it be solved," she added.
Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten said that prosecutors intend to seek the death penalty.
Two years ago the FBI offered a $50,000 (£36,000) reward to anyone who could help crack the case.
Crime spree that terrorised communities
By James Cook, BBC News Los Angeles correspondent
After four decades of frustration for detectives, it turned out the suspect had been living under their noses all along.
"We found the needle in the haystack and it was right here in Sacramento," said district attorney Anne Marie Schubert.
Joseph James DeAngelo had apparently been living an ordinary life on a quiet suburban street, a former police officer with grown-up children who was "very surprised" when he was arrested and taken into custody.
Details of his alleged crimes are deeply disturbing and collective psychological scars endure.
Many police officers and prosecutors involved in the case vividly recall the terror of the crime spree in their communities.
"Everyone was afraid," said FBI special agent Marcus Knutson, who was born and raised in Sacramento, as he announced a fresh appeal for information on the case two years ago.
"We had people sleeping with shotguns, we had people purchasing dogs. People were concerned, and they had a right to be. This guy was terrorising the community. He did horrible things."
What do we know about the accused?
According to the Sacramento Bee newspaper, he had been living with his daughter and granddaughter in the city's Citrus Heights neighbourhood.
He was fired from the Auburn Police Department in 1979 after he was charged with shoplifting, according to the Auburn Journal.
Billy Jensen
✔
@Billyjensen
If you’ve been following the Golden State Killer case, stay tuned. We will be having a rather large announcement tomorrow. #michellemcnamara #IllBeGoneInTheDark #stepintothelight
4:52 PM - Apr 25, 2018 · Chicago, IL
Police say it was "very likely" that he was committing these crimes while employed as a police officer.
He had also worked as an officer in Exeter, California from 1973 to 1976, during a time when several crimes were committed there, police say.
What reaction has there been?
Jane Carson-Sandler, who was the rapist's fifth victim in October 1976, told the Island Packet newspaper that detectives had emailed her on Wednesday to inform her of the arrest.
"I just found out this morning," she said. "I'm overwhelmed with joy. I've been crying, sobbing."
The case was investigated by author Michelle McNamara for her book I'll Be Gone in the Dark. McNamara died before the book could be published.
Her co-author, Billy Jensen, tweeted on Tuesday night to say there would be a "rather large announcement tomorrow".
Another contributor to the book, Paul Haynes, said: "Stunned. Excited. No other words right now."
Skip Twitter post by @ThePaulOfHaynes
Paul Haynes
@ThePaulOfHaynes
Stunned. Excited. No other words right now.
10:59 PM - Apr 25, 2018
What were the crimes?
The Golden State Killer, also known as the East Area Rapist, Original Night Stalker, and the Diamond Knot Killer is believed to have carried out rapes and murders between 1976 and 1986, killing girls and women aged between 12 and 41.
Prosecutors say the "reign of terror" began in Sacramento and spread to San Francisco and then on to central and southern California. Links between the cases were established by DNA evidence, police say.
A police reward poster shows photofit pictures of the suspect
The attacker broke into homes at night and then tied up and raped his female victims.
Before fleeing he stole items such as cash, jewellery and identification.
The last case to be linked to the Golden State Killer was the rape and murder of an 18-year-old woman in Irvine, Orange County, in May 1986.
Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas said the suspect had been called many names but added: "Today, it's our pleasure to call him 'defendant'."
For Young South Koreans, the Inter-Korea Summit Is Just Another Thing to Worry About - TIME
'Our Hands Are Already Full.' For Young South Koreans, the Inter-Korea Summit Is Just Another Thing to Worry About
A couple walk through a park in Seoul on March 24, 2016.
By CHARLIE CAMPBELL / SEOUL April 25, 2018
History weighs heavy over Friday’s meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea. The talks bring together Kim Jong Un, grandson of North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the child of refugees who fled the North during the 1950-53 Korean War. The setting is also significant; the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, is a narrow strip of land that has separated the two nations since that Cold War conflict ended in a prickly stalemate.
On one level, this is a summit between two leaders striving to fulfill their forebears’ legacies: Kim’s mission to safeguard his dynastic regime; Moon’s to reunite the riven peninsula. But Pyongyang’s development of a nuclear-armed missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland has hauled Washington into the reckoning, with U.S. President Donald Trump poised to meet with Kim in coming weeks for what would be the first ever meeting between leaders of these longtime adversaries.
Another historic moment, to be sure. But for many younger South Koreans with no recollection of the two nations united, the talks are an irritation piled onto mounting domestic pressures, such as record youth unemployment, an aging and declining population, sluggish growth, and corruption scandals involving the nation’s highest office. “We don’t want North Korea to be part of the agenda,” says Minyong Yoon, 25, a computer science student from the city of Suwon outside Seoul. “Our hands are already full.”
Seoul’s Hanyang University, where TIME met Yoon and a group of his fellow students, occupies a manicured campus befitting its reputation as South Korea’s equivalent of MIT. With a focus on engineering, alumni include current board members of multinationals Samsung, LG and Hyundai, as well as a bevy of politicians, artists and sports stars. But what unites all students is a desire to forge the future — and North Korea is conspicuously absent from their vision.
A survey last year by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification found that 71.2% of South Koreans in their 20s oppose reunification. Across all age groups, support has dropped to just 57.8% from almost 70% four years prior. “For the younger generation, North Korea is no longer important,” says economics student Somin Yoon, 23, from Seoul, and no relation to Minyong.
These views chafe with a recent flood of ostensibly good news. On Saturday, North Korea announced it would immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, dismantle its nuclear test site and prioritize economic growth. In response, South Korea turned off propaganda broadcasts at the DMZ. Kim Jong Un has also suggested that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea wouldn’t be a precondition for nuclear disarmament. President Moon called the move “a significant decision towards total denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
But Hanyang students are unassuaged, saying too much time has already been sacrificed to the past. All South Korean men between 18-35 must complete two years of national service, which feels like time snatched away while they are in their prime. The training and drills that comprise this obligation fortify the idea that North Korea is an existential enemy.
Students warn of North Korean spies and underground extreme leftist groups that praise Kim Jong Un and encourage protests against the American THAAD anti-missile system that South Korea now hosts. “I’ve actually seen their leaflets scattered around this campus,” says Yu Kin Kim, 23, a business student from the central city of Daejeon. “It worries me a lot.”
While the division of the Koreas is a painful memory for their parents’ generation, Hanyang students mainly feel apathy. Only 2.5 miles of barbwire and minefields divide these lands, but culturally it’s a chasm: K-Pop and cosmetic surgery versus goose-stepping collectivism; bullet train and smartphone versus bullock cart and whip. “In terms of geography, it’s the closest country, but diplomatically it’s the furthest; we cannot just visit North Korea,” says Hanju Kim, 21, from Seoul, and no relation to Yu Kin.
A man walks past a military fence covered with ribbons calling for peace and reunification at the Imjingak peace park near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas at the border city of Paju on Jan. 8, 2018.
A man walks past a military fence covered with ribbons calling for peace and reunification at the Imjingak peace park near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas at the border city of Paju on Jan. 8, 2018. Jung Yeon-Je—AFP/Getty Images
Compounding matters are the enormous pressures South Korea puts on young people. The school year lasts 11 months and students often spend 16 hours a day in class and afterschool study sessions called hagwons. South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world for children aged 10-19. During Minyong Yoon’s final year of high school, “I slept for only four or five hours a night,” he says.
Japanese and American culture has seeped into South Korean society, while the North remains ossified under Stalinist indoctrination. Interactions with the 32,000 North Koreans who have made the perilous journey to South Korea reinforce the differences. “Having a whole bunch of brainwashed people wandering around the country just isn’t good for us,” says Hanju Kim.
Defectors gain preferential access to university though affirmative action programs, which breeds resentment. Hanju Kim says there are one or two defectors in each grade of his public administration degree course, accounting for about 2% of all students. But they “definitely struggle” because of mandatory English courses, he says, adding, “they also have some problems understanding our professors’ language.”
For many students, the idea of opening the floodgates to North Koreans is almost as unpalatable as war. Reunification would be prohibitively costly for the world’s 11th biggest economy, not to mention the significant social and security problems. North Korea’s GDP is less than 1% of that of the South, meaning uniting the nations would involve many times the burden of binding East and West Germany in 1990. (Even a quarter of a century later, former East German provinces lag behind in most developmental metrics.) “As an economist, I have to weigh the benefits versus the cost allocation,” says Somin Yoon. “And it just doesn’t add up.”
But not all agree. Soojin Oh, a 23-year-old tourism student, favors reunification, though admits it is a minority view within her peer group. “If reunification means we would be linked to Russia and continental Europe then Korea will become truly part of the globe,” she says. “And we would have peace dividends owing to reducing our military costs.”
After Kim and Moon sit down Friday, the next step will be a meeting between the despot and the irascible Trump, who even threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” while speaking at the U.N. Earlier this month, hawkish CIA chief and Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo reportedly met with Kim in Pyongyang to draw up parameters for the meeting with Trump. National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has frequently advocated for preemptive strikes against both North Korea and Iran, joins Pompeo in Trump’s combative new-look inner circle.
Read more: Will Trump Make a Bad Deal With North Korea?
The prospect of the former reality TV star Trump, who came to power bellowing “America First,” dictating South Korea’s future security with a cabal of saber-rattlers is understandably galling. When Trump and Kim exchanged barbs late last year, “It looked like UFC or World Wrestling Entertainment,” says Minyong Yoon. “They just want to show how big and strong they are to their own people.” Hanju Kim agrees: “It was like childish bragging.”
It’s hard not to sympathize. Koreans have rarely held the levers of their own destiny. Since the 13th century, the peninsula has alternated between Chinese and Japanese occupation, and following World War II was split down the 38th parallel. But unlike Germany, which suffered a similar fate in retribution for Nazi aggression, Korea never invaded anywhere — it was scythed apart simply because of the rivalry between Soviet Russia and its erstwhile Western Allies.
Today, the Korean people sit on the frontline as a mercurial U.S. President fires off the occasional 280-characters of vitriol on social media. And despite Trump’s bluster, Hanyang students — who would likely be called upon to fight if conflict broke out — don’t believe the U.S has the stomach to stay the course, pointing to how the hippie movement catalyzed Washington’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
“America in all its history has never been bombarded on its own [mainland],” says Yu Kin Kim. “The North Koreans think that were they to land a direct hit on America itself, then just maybe like Vietnam there will be anti-war protests because they’ve never been in the situation of war [in their homeland.]”
It all leaves Yu Kin Kim fatalistic about the future, believing that South Korea waging war on its own terms may be preferential to having its fate decided by an unreliable Washington, or the purgatory of waiting for the next escalation. “Otherwise, it’s like living every day with a big gun to the back of your neck,” he says grimly. “And I really don’t want to live like that.”
— With reporting by Stephen Kim / Seoul
A couple walk through a park in Seoul on March 24, 2016.
By CHARLIE CAMPBELL / SEOUL April 25, 2018
History weighs heavy over Friday’s meeting between the leaders of North and South Korea. The talks bring together Kim Jong Un, grandson of North Korea’s founder Kim Il Sung, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the child of refugees who fled the North during the 1950-53 Korean War. The setting is also significant; the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, is a narrow strip of land that has separated the two nations since that Cold War conflict ended in a prickly stalemate.
On one level, this is a summit between two leaders striving to fulfill their forebears’ legacies: Kim’s mission to safeguard his dynastic regime; Moon’s to reunite the riven peninsula. But Pyongyang’s development of a nuclear-armed missile capable of striking the U.S. mainland has hauled Washington into the reckoning, with U.S. President Donald Trump poised to meet with Kim in coming weeks for what would be the first ever meeting between leaders of these longtime adversaries.
Another historic moment, to be sure. But for many younger South Koreans with no recollection of the two nations united, the talks are an irritation piled onto mounting domestic pressures, such as record youth unemployment, an aging and declining population, sluggish growth, and corruption scandals involving the nation’s highest office. “We don’t want North Korea to be part of the agenda,” says Minyong Yoon, 25, a computer science student from the city of Suwon outside Seoul. “Our hands are already full.”
Seoul’s Hanyang University, where TIME met Yoon and a group of his fellow students, occupies a manicured campus befitting its reputation as South Korea’s equivalent of MIT. With a focus on engineering, alumni include current board members of multinationals Samsung, LG and Hyundai, as well as a bevy of politicians, artists and sports stars. But what unites all students is a desire to forge the future — and North Korea is conspicuously absent from their vision.
A survey last year by the government-run Korea Institute for National Unification found that 71.2% of South Koreans in their 20s oppose reunification. Across all age groups, support has dropped to just 57.8% from almost 70% four years prior. “For the younger generation, North Korea is no longer important,” says economics student Somin Yoon, 23, from Seoul, and no relation to Minyong.
These views chafe with a recent flood of ostensibly good news. On Saturday, North Korea announced it would immediately suspend nuclear and missile tests, dismantle its nuclear test site and prioritize economic growth. In response, South Korea turned off propaganda broadcasts at the DMZ. Kim Jong Un has also suggested that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea wouldn’t be a precondition for nuclear disarmament. President Moon called the move “a significant decision towards total denuclearization of the Korean peninsula.”
But Hanyang students are unassuaged, saying too much time has already been sacrificed to the past. All South Korean men between 18-35 must complete two years of national service, which feels like time snatched away while they are in their prime. The training and drills that comprise this obligation fortify the idea that North Korea is an existential enemy.
Students warn of North Korean spies and underground extreme leftist groups that praise Kim Jong Un and encourage protests against the American THAAD anti-missile system that South Korea now hosts. “I’ve actually seen their leaflets scattered around this campus,” says Yu Kin Kim, 23, a business student from the central city of Daejeon. “It worries me a lot.”
While the division of the Koreas is a painful memory for their parents’ generation, Hanyang students mainly feel apathy. Only 2.5 miles of barbwire and minefields divide these lands, but culturally it’s a chasm: K-Pop and cosmetic surgery versus goose-stepping collectivism; bullet train and smartphone versus bullock cart and whip. “In terms of geography, it’s the closest country, but diplomatically it’s the furthest; we cannot just visit North Korea,” says Hanju Kim, 21, from Seoul, and no relation to Yu Kin.
A man walks past a military fence covered with ribbons calling for peace and reunification at the Imjingak peace park near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas at the border city of Paju on Jan. 8, 2018.
A man walks past a military fence covered with ribbons calling for peace and reunification at the Imjingak peace park near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) dividing the two Koreas at the border city of Paju on Jan. 8, 2018. Jung Yeon-Je—AFP/Getty Images
Compounding matters are the enormous pressures South Korea puts on young people. The school year lasts 11 months and students often spend 16 hours a day in class and afterschool study sessions called hagwons. South Korea has the highest suicide rate in the world for children aged 10-19. During Minyong Yoon’s final year of high school, “I slept for only four or five hours a night,” he says.
Japanese and American culture has seeped into South Korean society, while the North remains ossified under Stalinist indoctrination. Interactions with the 32,000 North Koreans who have made the perilous journey to South Korea reinforce the differences. “Having a whole bunch of brainwashed people wandering around the country just isn’t good for us,” says Hanju Kim.
Defectors gain preferential access to university though affirmative action programs, which breeds resentment. Hanju Kim says there are one or two defectors in each grade of his public administration degree course, accounting for about 2% of all students. But they “definitely struggle” because of mandatory English courses, he says, adding, “they also have some problems understanding our professors’ language.”
For many students, the idea of opening the floodgates to North Koreans is almost as unpalatable as war. Reunification would be prohibitively costly for the world’s 11th biggest economy, not to mention the significant social and security problems. North Korea’s GDP is less than 1% of that of the South, meaning uniting the nations would involve many times the burden of binding East and West Germany in 1990. (Even a quarter of a century later, former East German provinces lag behind in most developmental metrics.) “As an economist, I have to weigh the benefits versus the cost allocation,” says Somin Yoon. “And it just doesn’t add up.”
But not all agree. Soojin Oh, a 23-year-old tourism student, favors reunification, though admits it is a minority view within her peer group. “If reunification means we would be linked to Russia and continental Europe then Korea will become truly part of the globe,” she says. “And we would have peace dividends owing to reducing our military costs.”
After Kim and Moon sit down Friday, the next step will be a meeting between the despot and the irascible Trump, who even threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” while speaking at the U.N. Earlier this month, hawkish CIA chief and Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo reportedly met with Kim in Pyongyang to draw up parameters for the meeting with Trump. National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has frequently advocated for preemptive strikes against both North Korea and Iran, joins Pompeo in Trump’s combative new-look inner circle.
Read more: Will Trump Make a Bad Deal With North Korea?
The prospect of the former reality TV star Trump, who came to power bellowing “America First,” dictating South Korea’s future security with a cabal of saber-rattlers is understandably galling. When Trump and Kim exchanged barbs late last year, “It looked like UFC or World Wrestling Entertainment,” says Minyong Yoon. “They just want to show how big and strong they are to their own people.” Hanju Kim agrees: “It was like childish bragging.”
It’s hard not to sympathize. Koreans have rarely held the levers of their own destiny. Since the 13th century, the peninsula has alternated between Chinese and Japanese occupation, and following World War II was split down the 38th parallel. But unlike Germany, which suffered a similar fate in retribution for Nazi aggression, Korea never invaded anywhere — it was scythed apart simply because of the rivalry between Soviet Russia and its erstwhile Western Allies.
Today, the Korean people sit on the frontline as a mercurial U.S. President fires off the occasional 280-characters of vitriol on social media. And despite Trump’s bluster, Hanyang students — who would likely be called upon to fight if conflict broke out — don’t believe the U.S has the stomach to stay the course, pointing to how the hippie movement catalyzed Washington’s withdrawal from the Vietnam War.
“America in all its history has never been bombarded on its own [mainland],” says Yu Kin Kim. “The North Koreans think that were they to land a direct hit on America itself, then just maybe like Vietnam there will be anti-war protests because they’ve never been in the situation of war [in their homeland.]”
It all leaves Yu Kin Kim fatalistic about the future, believing that South Korea waging war on its own terms may be preferential to having its fate decided by an unreliable Washington, or the purgatory of waiting for the next escalation. “Otherwise, it’s like living every day with a big gun to the back of your neck,” he says grimly. “And I really don’t want to live like that.”
— With reporting by Stephen Kim / Seoul
The WTO still considers China a 'developing nation.' Here's the big problem with that - CNBC News
The WTO still considers China a 'developing nation.' Here's the big problem with that
President Trump recently called out China for claiming the special privileges of a poor country.
China is still considered a developing nation by the WTO a status it received when it joined decades ago. That allows it to take on fewer commitments than developed nations.
China's economy is now one of the biggest in the world; it needs to step up and pull its economic weight.
Simon Lester and Huan Zhu, Cato Institute
Published April 25, 2018 Updated 20 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
Two workers load steels products at a wharf in Yichang, Hubei Province of China.
VCG | Getty Images
Two workers load steels products at a wharf in Yichang, Hubei Province of China.
President Trump recently called out China for claiming the special privileges of a poor country, tweeting that "China, which is a great economic power, is considered a Developing Nation within the World Trade Organization. They therefore get tremendous perks and advantages, especially over the U.S. Does anybody think this is fair[?]"
With a number of U.S.-China trade disputes simmering, this criticism from Trump seemed designed to justify his various tariff threats, on steel, aluminum and a wide range of other products.
Like many of Trump's policy pronouncements, this one was clumsily framed and misleading, but had a grain of truth to it. If China is dominating the international economy, as you might conclude from headlines, why is it classified as "developing" and why does it get special treatment?
The answer is fairly simple: When China began the process of joining the WTO in 1986, it was, in fact, quite poor. Its GDP per capita, taking into account purchasing power parity (PPP), was around $677, compared to $19,078 for the United States. However, the critics are right that China's economy has grown substantially in recent years, and it is now time for China to become a more equal partner in international economic affairs.
There is no official WTO classification as to which countries are "developing." This status is self-selected, based on politics more than law or economics, and can be contested. It is a controversial point that usually stays buried beneath the surface, but occasionally flares up into minor controversy.
"The critics are right that China's economy has grown substantially in recent years, and it is now time for China to become a more equal partner in international economic affairs."
By declaring itself a developing country as part of the negotiations, China was able to take on fewer commitments at the WTO. However, 17 years into its WTO membership, China has surged to become the second largest economy in the world. Parts of China are now as advanced as parts of the industrialized world.
At the same time, before you assume that China has now "graduated" to rich country status, keep in mind that not all Chinese are doing so well. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow recently said, "China is a first-world economy, behaving like a third-world economy," but that is an exaggeration.
China's GDP per capita, measured with PPP, was $16,660 in 2017. That is a vast improvement over where it was in 1986, or in 2001 when it joined the WTO, but it is still much lower than the United States ($59,501).
This low figure for average wealth, despite high incomes in some big cities, is the result of substantial income inequality in China. And as a result, China can still call itself "developing" in the context of the WTO.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that China is much richer as a whole than it used to be, and this is largely thanks to the economic reform, including lowering its tariffs and liberalizing some sectors of the economy, that accompanied China's accession to the WTO. In this sense, its economic status has changed. While it is still developing, it is much closer to the developed countries than before.
China's changed economic circumstances mean that its role in the world trading system merits reconsideration. A key objective of the WTO is to raise living standards, and although China's WTO membership has helped in this regard it still has a long way to go.
While China should maintain its developing country status, if it wants to avoid the ire of the Trump administration and the world community, China should pay back some of the "raise" it got by playing a more active role in supporting the world trading system.
In recent years, the WTO's liberalization agenda has stalled in a number of areas. There are no easy answers as to how revive it, but positive contributions by China could help. Here are some steps it could take to show that it is pulling its weight.
One area that could use a boost is the ongoing negotiations on the liberalization of environmental goods, which would lower tariffs on a wide range of products, including solar panels and wind turbines (China's tariffs on these products are relatively low, but other countries' tariffs are as high as 35%).
China has been accused of derailing these talks. A good way to change its image on the world stage would be to push this kind of basic tariff liberalization forward instead of getting in its way.
In addition, China could finally make a serious effort to join the WTO's Agreement on Government Procurement, after years of tepid offers in the negotiations. Governments are some of the biggest purchasers of goods and services in the world, and taxpayers are better served when they buy from the highest-quality/lowest-cost producer, rather than simply give preference to domestic companies.
Opening up more of its procurement market to foreign companies -- and getting access to foreign markets for its own companies in exchange -- would be a big step towards a more liberalized Chinese economy.
Lastly, China could join the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) talks taking place in Geneva, which aim to make progress in dealing with the complex regulatory barriers that interfere with services trade. In doing so, however, China must be constructive and not drag its feet in the negotiations, as some fear.
With greater wealth comes greater responsibility. Even if it continues to maintain its "developing" status, as China's economy grows it should take on additional international obligations and play a more equal role in international economic organizations such as the WTO. By doing so, China will improve its own economy, reduce international economic conflict, and help strengthen the world trading system.
Commentary by Simon Lester, the associate director of Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, and Huan Zhu, a research associate.
President Trump recently called out China for claiming the special privileges of a poor country.
China is still considered a developing nation by the WTO a status it received when it joined decades ago. That allows it to take on fewer commitments than developed nations.
China's economy is now one of the biggest in the world; it needs to step up and pull its economic weight.
Simon Lester and Huan Zhu, Cato Institute
Published April 25, 2018 Updated 20 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
Two workers load steels products at a wharf in Yichang, Hubei Province of China.
VCG | Getty Images
Two workers load steels products at a wharf in Yichang, Hubei Province of China.
President Trump recently called out China for claiming the special privileges of a poor country, tweeting that "China, which is a great economic power, is considered a Developing Nation within the World Trade Organization. They therefore get tremendous perks and advantages, especially over the U.S. Does anybody think this is fair[?]"
With a number of U.S.-China trade disputes simmering, this criticism from Trump seemed designed to justify his various tariff threats, on steel, aluminum and a wide range of other products.
Like many of Trump's policy pronouncements, this one was clumsily framed and misleading, but had a grain of truth to it. If China is dominating the international economy, as you might conclude from headlines, why is it classified as "developing" and why does it get special treatment?
The answer is fairly simple: When China began the process of joining the WTO in 1986, it was, in fact, quite poor. Its GDP per capita, taking into account purchasing power parity (PPP), was around $677, compared to $19,078 for the United States. However, the critics are right that China's economy has grown substantially in recent years, and it is now time for China to become a more equal partner in international economic affairs.
There is no official WTO classification as to which countries are "developing." This status is self-selected, based on politics more than law or economics, and can be contested. It is a controversial point that usually stays buried beneath the surface, but occasionally flares up into minor controversy.
"The critics are right that China's economy has grown substantially in recent years, and it is now time for China to become a more equal partner in international economic affairs."
By declaring itself a developing country as part of the negotiations, China was able to take on fewer commitments at the WTO. However, 17 years into its WTO membership, China has surged to become the second largest economy in the world. Parts of China are now as advanced as parts of the industrialized world.
At the same time, before you assume that China has now "graduated" to rich country status, keep in mind that not all Chinese are doing so well. National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow recently said, "China is a first-world economy, behaving like a third-world economy," but that is an exaggeration.
China's GDP per capita, measured with PPP, was $16,660 in 2017. That is a vast improvement over where it was in 1986, or in 2001 when it joined the WTO, but it is still much lower than the United States ($59,501).
This low figure for average wealth, despite high incomes in some big cities, is the result of substantial income inequality in China. And as a result, China can still call itself "developing" in the context of the WTO.
Nevertheless, it is undeniable that China is much richer as a whole than it used to be, and this is largely thanks to the economic reform, including lowering its tariffs and liberalizing some sectors of the economy, that accompanied China's accession to the WTO. In this sense, its economic status has changed. While it is still developing, it is much closer to the developed countries than before.
China's changed economic circumstances mean that its role in the world trading system merits reconsideration. A key objective of the WTO is to raise living standards, and although China's WTO membership has helped in this regard it still has a long way to go.
While China should maintain its developing country status, if it wants to avoid the ire of the Trump administration and the world community, China should pay back some of the "raise" it got by playing a more active role in supporting the world trading system.
In recent years, the WTO's liberalization agenda has stalled in a number of areas. There are no easy answers as to how revive it, but positive contributions by China could help. Here are some steps it could take to show that it is pulling its weight.
One area that could use a boost is the ongoing negotiations on the liberalization of environmental goods, which would lower tariffs on a wide range of products, including solar panels and wind turbines (China's tariffs on these products are relatively low, but other countries' tariffs are as high as 35%).
China has been accused of derailing these talks. A good way to change its image on the world stage would be to push this kind of basic tariff liberalization forward instead of getting in its way.
In addition, China could finally make a serious effort to join the WTO's Agreement on Government Procurement, after years of tepid offers in the negotiations. Governments are some of the biggest purchasers of goods and services in the world, and taxpayers are better served when they buy from the highest-quality/lowest-cost producer, rather than simply give preference to domestic companies.
Opening up more of its procurement market to foreign companies -- and getting access to foreign markets for its own companies in exchange -- would be a big step towards a more liberalized Chinese economy.
Lastly, China could join the Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA) talks taking place in Geneva, which aim to make progress in dealing with the complex regulatory barriers that interfere with services trade. In doing so, however, China must be constructive and not drag its feet in the negotiations, as some fear.
With greater wealth comes greater responsibility. Even if it continues to maintain its "developing" status, as China's economy grows it should take on additional international obligations and play a more equal role in international economic organizations such as the WTO. By doing so, China will improve its own economy, reduce international economic conflict, and help strengthen the world trading system.
Commentary by Simon Lester, the associate director of Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies, and Huan Zhu, a research associate.
China warns of more action after military drills near Taiwan - Reuters
APRIL 25, 2018 / 1:01 PM / UPDATED A DAY AGO
China warns of more action after military drills near Taiwan
Ben Blanchard, Jess Macy Yu
BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - A series of Chinese drills near Taiwan were designed to send a clear message to the island and China will take further steps if Taiwan independence forces persist in doing as they please, Beijing said on Wednesday, as Taiwan denounced threats of force.
Over the past year or so, China has ramped up military drills around democratic Taiwan, including flying bombers and other military aircraft around the self-ruled island. Last week China drilled in the sensitive Taiwan Strait.
China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, and its hostility towards the island has grown since the 2016 election as president of Tsai Ing-wen from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.
China has been issuing increasingly strident calls for Taiwan to toe the line, even as Tsai has pledged to maintain the status quo and keep the peace.
Speaking at a regular news briefing, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said the message the People’s Liberation Army was sending with its exercises was “extremely clear”.
“We have the resolute will, full confidence and sufficient ability to foil any form of Taiwan independence separatist plots and moves and to defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Ma said.
“If Taiwan independence forces continue to do as they please, we will take further steps,” he added, without giving details.
The military’s drills were aimed at protecting peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the interests of people on both sides of it, Ma said.
In Taipei, the government’s China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said the people of Taiwan could not accept China’s military pressure and threats which it said had damaged peace in the Taiwan Strait.
“The mainland side should not attribute the consequences of misjudgment to Taiwan. This is an extremely irresponsible act,” it added.
The Republic of China is a sovereign state, the council said, using Taiwan’s formal name, and will brook no slander or criticism from China.
“We sternly warn the other side, do not create incidents again. Only by abandoning armed intimidation, facing up to the reality of the separate control on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and having pragmatic communication and dialogue can the differences be resolved.”
Amid the growing tension with China, Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Tuesday it will simulate repelling an invading force, emergency repairs of a major air base and using civilian-operated drones as part of military exercises starting next week.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry
China warns of more action after military drills near Taiwan
Ben Blanchard, Jess Macy Yu
BEIJING/TAIPEI (Reuters) - A series of Chinese drills near Taiwan were designed to send a clear message to the island and China will take further steps if Taiwan independence forces persist in doing as they please, Beijing said on Wednesday, as Taiwan denounced threats of force.
Over the past year or so, China has ramped up military drills around democratic Taiwan, including flying bombers and other military aircraft around the self-ruled island. Last week China drilled in the sensitive Taiwan Strait.
China claims Taiwan as its sacred territory, and its hostility towards the island has grown since the 2016 election as president of Tsai Ing-wen from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party.
China has been issuing increasingly strident calls for Taiwan to toe the line, even as Tsai has pledged to maintain the status quo and keep the peace.
Speaking at a regular news briefing, Ma Xiaoguang, spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said the message the People’s Liberation Army was sending with its exercises was “extremely clear”.
“We have the resolute will, full confidence and sufficient ability to foil any form of Taiwan independence separatist plots and moves and to defend the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Ma said.
“If Taiwan independence forces continue to do as they please, we will take further steps,” he added, without giving details.
The military’s drills were aimed at protecting peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the interests of people on both sides of it, Ma said.
In Taipei, the government’s China policy-making Mainland Affairs Council said the people of Taiwan could not accept China’s military pressure and threats which it said had damaged peace in the Taiwan Strait.
“The mainland side should not attribute the consequences of misjudgment to Taiwan. This is an extremely irresponsible act,” it added.
The Republic of China is a sovereign state, the council said, using Taiwan’s formal name, and will brook no slander or criticism from China.
“We sternly warn the other side, do not create incidents again. Only by abandoning armed intimidation, facing up to the reality of the separate control on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, and having pragmatic communication and dialogue can the differences be resolved.”
Amid the growing tension with China, Taiwan’s defense ministry said on Tuesday it will simulate repelling an invading force, emergency repairs of a major air base and using civilian-operated drones as part of military exercises starting next week.
Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Michael Perry
Why Trump Gets Away With Lying
When people feel marginalized, blatant lies can pass for authenticity.
By Mark Buchanan
April 25, 2018, 11:00 PM GMT+10
Authentic? Photographer: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Over the past two years, Donald Trump has lied incessantly and brazenly, and trampled all over traditional norms of respectable behavior. Yet his supporters still admire him and, bizarrely, see him as an authentic figure, honestly and honorably fighting for their interests. For many, it’s difficult to fathom.
But more than 50 years ago, an American sociologist and political scientist predicted that extreme social conditions might make it possible for a vulgar, lying demagogue to appeal to a broad group of ordinary people. Three psychologists have now run experiments reproducing the effect in a set of volunteers holding a mock election — demonstrating how Trump’s vulgarity can be a feature, not a flaw, and a key part of his appeal to a huge swath of America that feels abandoned by the economic and political establishment.
As Oliver Hahl of Carnegie Mellon and colleagues note, a survey taken after the 2016 U.S. Election found that Trump supporters don’t believe many of his lies, especially his most egregious ones. When Trump claimed that global warming is a Chinese hoax, most recognized it as false, but they didn’t much care. They saw his language as expressing deeper truths.
As it turns out, the sociologist Seymour Lipset predicted that this kind of disconnect could happen, triggered by what he called a “crisis of legitimacy.” The legitimacy of democracy might be undermined, Lipset envisioned, if a large part of society came to feel abandoned by the political establishment. Or, if a group felt a loss of power as leaders shifted their favor to new social groups. The white working class today — Trump’s base — fits both descriptions, as policies furthering globalization and offshoring of jobs have robbed them of economic opportunity, and immigration and demographic trends have visibly altered American society.
Lipset suggested that a crisis of legitimacy would have psychological consequences — and set the stage for a lying demagogue to be perceived by many people as bravely speaking suppressed truths. In normal conditions, voters shun any candidate who obviously lies and abuses widely shared social norms. But in a crisis, Lipset argued, disenfranchised voters may see such violations as a symbolic protest, and a deliberate poke in the eye to the elites they have come to despise.
This would explain how many Trump supporters, ordinary people, could actually cheer when he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals, or mocked Senator John McCain for having been shot down in the Vietnam War. This is not to say that Trump supporters approved of his behavior. Rather, they delighted in the profound irritation of the press and the political establishment.
Hahl and colleagues went further, with some experiments designed to assess how the political landscape can affect people’s perception of lies. They split volunteers into two groups, one of which they manipulated to feel marginalized, neglected by a powerful establishment group. They then presented the groups with two candidates, one of whom blatantly lied and made misogynistic comments. The vulgar behavior repelled the “establishment” group, but actually attracted the marginalized group — irrespective of previous political leanings. Lying helped form a bond of solidarity, by challenging the establishment’s authority to define what was true or correct.
From this perspective, Trump cleverly or by instinct found a way to appeal to the vast left-behind of the white middle classes, and did so in part through antagonism toward elites and disrespect for their norms. Pissing off elites cemented his bond with his base.
It’s depressing that politicians’ unthinking neglect of a large portion of society may have put us into such a dangerous spot. Then again, seeing Trump as the symptom of a crisis brought about by social and political dysfunction can also bring hope. The shock of Trump, or something similar, may have been unavoidable. And Trump's rise might signal the start of a necessary period of painful disruption and chaos, before we find a way to reverse decades of middle class social decay.
When people feel marginalized, blatant lies can pass for authenticity.
By Mark Buchanan
April 25, 2018, 11:00 PM GMT+10
Authentic? Photographer: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images
Over the past two years, Donald Trump has lied incessantly and brazenly, and trampled all over traditional norms of respectable behavior. Yet his supporters still admire him and, bizarrely, see him as an authentic figure, honestly and honorably fighting for their interests. For many, it’s difficult to fathom.
But more than 50 years ago, an American sociologist and political scientist predicted that extreme social conditions might make it possible for a vulgar, lying demagogue to appeal to a broad group of ordinary people. Three psychologists have now run experiments reproducing the effect in a set of volunteers holding a mock election — demonstrating how Trump’s vulgarity can be a feature, not a flaw, and a key part of his appeal to a huge swath of America that feels abandoned by the economic and political establishment.
As Oliver Hahl of Carnegie Mellon and colleagues note, a survey taken after the 2016 U.S. Election found that Trump supporters don’t believe many of his lies, especially his most egregious ones. When Trump claimed that global warming is a Chinese hoax, most recognized it as false, but they didn’t much care. They saw his language as expressing deeper truths.
As it turns out, the sociologist Seymour Lipset predicted that this kind of disconnect could happen, triggered by what he called a “crisis of legitimacy.” The legitimacy of democracy might be undermined, Lipset envisioned, if a large part of society came to feel abandoned by the political establishment. Or, if a group felt a loss of power as leaders shifted their favor to new social groups. The white working class today — Trump’s base — fits both descriptions, as policies furthering globalization and offshoring of jobs have robbed them of economic opportunity, and immigration and demographic trends have visibly altered American society.
Lipset suggested that a crisis of legitimacy would have psychological consequences — and set the stage for a lying demagogue to be perceived by many people as bravely speaking suppressed truths. In normal conditions, voters shun any candidate who obviously lies and abuses widely shared social norms. But in a crisis, Lipset argued, disenfranchised voters may see such violations as a symbolic protest, and a deliberate poke in the eye to the elites they have come to despise.
This would explain how many Trump supporters, ordinary people, could actually cheer when he bragged about grabbing women’s genitals, or mocked Senator John McCain for having been shot down in the Vietnam War. This is not to say that Trump supporters approved of his behavior. Rather, they delighted in the profound irritation of the press and the political establishment.
Hahl and colleagues went further, with some experiments designed to assess how the political landscape can affect people’s perception of lies. They split volunteers into two groups, one of which they manipulated to feel marginalized, neglected by a powerful establishment group. They then presented the groups with two candidates, one of whom blatantly lied and made misogynistic comments. The vulgar behavior repelled the “establishment” group, but actually attracted the marginalized group — irrespective of previous political leanings. Lying helped form a bond of solidarity, by challenging the establishment’s authority to define what was true or correct.
From this perspective, Trump cleverly or by instinct found a way to appeal to the vast left-behind of the white middle classes, and did so in part through antagonism toward elites and disrespect for their norms. Pissing off elites cemented his bond with his base.
It’s depressing that politicians’ unthinking neglect of a large portion of society may have put us into such a dangerous spot. Then again, seeing Trump as the symptom of a crisis brought about by social and political dysfunction can also bring hope. The shock of Trump, or something similar, may have been unavoidable. And Trump's rise might signal the start of a necessary period of painful disruption and chaos, before we find a way to reverse decades of middle class social decay.
Call Him Mr. Impeachment: Tom Steyer’s War Against Donald Trump - Bloomberg Businessweek
Call Him Mr. Impeachment: Tom Steyer’s War Against Donald Trump
A lot of Democrats think the billionaire investor is the wrong man with the wrong idea. Ask him if he cares.
By April 25, 2018, 7:00 PM GMT+10
Narcissism was in the air in Washington. On a February night a few hundred yards from the White House, Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire and political activist, had taken over three rooms at the National Press Club for a panel called Presidential Mental Health & Nuclear Weapons. On the dais, two psychiatrists, a psychologist, a Jungian author, and a warhead-security specialist were settling into blue chairs in front of a blue curtain. They were there to discuss the matter of Donald Trump’s ego. But Steyer, stepping to the lectern by their side, was unmistakably the star of the show. Applause broke out. He smiled and locked eyes with people around the room. Fans following the Facebook livestream sent thumbs-ups by the thousands as he and the five speakers set about explaining why Trump’s sadism, paranoia, unpredictability, and self-obsession make him ill-suited to nuclear weaponry.
Steyer has commanded the spotlight before. His fund, Farallon Capital Management, made him a finance kingpin, and he became a darling of environmentalists after quitting in 2012 to fight climate change full time. His third act began six months ago, when he paid for and starred in his first nationwide ad agitating for Trump’s impeachment. If you’ve watched cable news recently, you’ve probably seen him, 60 years old with a healthy tan and a look of grim concern, staring into your soul.
“I’m Tom Steyer, and like you, I’m a citizen who knows it’s up to us to do something,” he says in the first spot, his voice gravelly and grave. He’s sitting by a fireplace wearing a folksy-billionaire midnight-blue denim shirt. His name comes on screen above “American Citizen” in smaller letters. Strings murmur eerily as the camera closes in. “People in Congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger,” Steyer says. Within four months of the ad’s first airing, 5 million people had joined his campaign, Need to Impeach, providing names for an impeachment petition and email addresses for his budding list.
Steyer isn’t the first to claim there are grounds for booting Trump from office, but his enormous pools of wealth, outrage, and ambition mean he can do more than the members of Congress responsible for impeachment proceedings: He can spend the money required to stoke a fire and fan its flames until a real chance to burn down the administration presents itself. Thus far, he’s pledged about $40 million for Need to Impeach and an additional $30 million to get millennials into voting booths in November. He views himself as the leader of a movement to deliver America from evil—not one of those billionaires who cut checks merely to buy influence in Washington. Never mind that Steyer spent more on disclosed donations during the 2014 and 2016 election cycles than anyone else, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
His spending over the past year has bought him at least three kinds of opponents. The first are supporters of Trump, the celebrity-king who’s survived bedlam, bankruptcy, and scandal that would have wiped out, or at least embarrassed, mere mortals. To them, Steyer is a younger George Soros, pulling strings from the shadows. The second are fellow Democrats who think his fixation is distracting at best and harebrained at worst. They point out that no president has been removed via impeachment, that Democrats don’t have the congressional majority they would need to initiate the proceedings, and that polls show less than half the country wants them to try. Steyer’s third set of opponents are skeptics who see his vast resources as the symptom of a disease, not its cure. Does America, they ask, need one billionaire to save it from another?
At his event in Washington, Steyer toggled between his two dominant modes, apocalyptic and jubilant. Toward the end, he riffed on the motivational value of fear. “When you’re absolutely sure you’re right,” he said, “and you’re fighting for the things you think are most important, then there’s also great joy in being able, once you’re in it, to push as hard as you can.”
He stepped down from the dais and was mobbed. As aides tried to usher him out, Steyer hugged and high-fived. Only when a lawyer launched into a sales pitch for a project did Steyer start to extract himself—except, no, he couldn’t help but stick around to listen. When he finally moved on, an aide tried again to focus his attention, but Steyer swung around him to say something into a supporter’s ear. He leaned back to show he was listening as the man replied, then plunged back in, aiming his finger at the guy’s heart. He was still gabbing as he left, the long goodbye of a born candidate.
A chemical reaction seems to take place inside the brains of the megarich when their fortunes grow from extraordinarily big to inconceivably vast. It convinces some of them that they possess the power to solve a great challenge or crisis of the day. This might help explain why billionaires go on quests to colonize space (Jeff Bezos), slow the aging process (Larry Ellison), build flying cars (Larry Page), or bore holes into the Earth for transportation by tunnel (Elon Musk).
Steyer isn’t living out a sci-fi fantasy. A former prep school jock who says he crushes 300 crunches a day, he’s cast himself as the hero of a black-and-white Western, ever preparing for a showdown at high noon. He even wears cowboy boots these days, though he says it’s for the heel support.
PHOTOGRAPHER: NATHANAEL TURNER FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
Before he can take down Trump, though, Steyer will have to claw past his own party’s sheriffs. Congressional minority leaders Nancy Pelosi of California and Chuck Schumer of New York are among those who’ve aired their displeasure with calls for impeachment, arguing that such talk is divisive and premature. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former senior adviser, has punched harder. “Steyer impeachment ads seem to me more of a vanity project,” he tweeted in November. “It is-at least [at] this point-an unhelpful message.” It took Steyer exactly one hour to slap back: “Unhelpful to whom, David?” He followed up a minute later with the less aristocratic “No fear.” The spat resumed a few months later. “Dems should NOT commit to impeachment,” Axelrod wrote on April 8. Steyer really didn’t like that. “Appeasing Mr. Trump and being polite is what’s wrong with the Establishment,” he replied. “Spare me,” Axelrod wrote back. “Don’t make the mistake of confusing your ad copy for a bill of impeachment.”
This kind of talk infuriates Steyer. A week before the Washington event, he was at a hotel bar in Las Vegas, banging his hand on a table. “There was no one in the United States who wanted to make a big deal out of impeachment!” he said. Some billionaires find Vegas irresistible for its bacchanalia, but Steyer was drinking seltzer with cranberry juice, light on the juice. He was in town to demand protections for young immigrants and to back an effort to make Nevada’s electricity greener.
Steyer’s most distinctive feature is a Roman nose, though it often cedes the stage to eyebrows that perform circus tricks when he gets excited. Trump gets them going. Steyer maintains that the president has disqualified himself from the land’s highest office by obstructing justice, conspiring with Russians, violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, undermining the free press, and simply being dangerously crazy. “We believe we have a gigantic threat to our democracy,” he said at the bar. “We believe this guy is very dangerous to the health and safety of American citizens.”
“When you’re absolutely sure you’re right and you’re fighting for the things you think are most important, then there’s also great joy in being able, once you’re in it, to push as hard as you can”
The “we” risked coming off as royal, but Steyer was reaching for the unifying vibe of a stump speech. Decades ago, he ran (successfully) for student body president at Phillips Exeter Academy, the New Hampshire school where Abraham Lincoln sent one of his sons. Steyer went from there to Yale, joining Morgan Stanley’s training program after graduation. He left, earned an MBA at Stanford, and in 1983 got a job at Goldman Sachs on Robert Rubin’s merger arbitrage team, which trained at least three future billionaires. Steyer quit a few years later for the only comparably glamorous job in finance: managing his own fund. While getting it up and running, he scored an intro to the investment firm Hellman & Friedman from Matthew Barger, a friend from Yale. “Tom’s possibly the only person I’ve ever met who I think could be president of the United States someday,” Barger told his colleagues at the time.
Hellman & Friedman helped Steyer set up the fund that would become Farallon, based in San Francisco and named for nearby islands that jut out of shark-infested waters. It made money every year for decades, buying up the junk bonds of distressed companies, betting on some stocks, shorting others, investing in real estate, and doing some private equity. Before 2008, when the financial crisis reached its nadir, Farallon’s main fund was returning an annual average of almost 15 percent, and the firm was overseeing more than $30 billion, making it one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.
It was also, to Steyer’s growing embarrassment, investing in oil, private prisons, subprime lending, and coal. By 2008 he’d grown alarmed about climate change; he was going to church more often and thinking seriously about politics. When a proposition to suspend some of California’s robust air pollution rules reached the state ballot in 2010, he donated $5 million to the campaign that ultimately defeated it. Two years later he left Farallon and went on to start NextGen Climate, a nonprofit with a super PAC arm, writing seven-digit checks that helped candidates willing to fight for the environment.
The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to strip away long-standing limits on corporate money in politics had inaugurated an era of historic hospitality to politically motivated billionaires. Some of the cash they’ve spent has stayed hidden, but as far as disclosed donations go, Steyer reigns supreme. By that measure, he outspent even notable Republican kingmakers Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, and Robert Mercer during the 2014 and 2016 national campaigns. The $75 million Steyer spent in 2014 exceeded the total from the next three donors combined, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (One of those three was Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which publishes Bloomberg Businessweek.) Steyer spent even more in 2016, about $91 million.
Bankers love to talk about their return on investment, but his was mediocre. Half of the eight Democrats he backed in big races in 2016, including Hillary Clinton, lost. That was slightly better than in 2014, when three of his seven candidates in Senate and gubernatorial races won. Steyer had a better run backing California ballot propositions, helping kill the 2010 air pollution plan and, two years later, spending more than $29 million on a measure that changed corporate tax rules and funneled money to green jobs.
“Politics is understood by very few people in the United States of America, and if you want to understand it, then I think you’ve got to put in your 10,000 hours. I have, actually. Do the math”
He didn’t see Trump coming. But only a few hours after the election, he published a pledge that he’d stand up to the incoming president. In July, six months into Trump’s term, something new took shape. Steyer changed NextGen Climate’s name to NextGen America and said its mission would expand to include health care, equality, and immigration issues.
That wasn’t enough for him, though. He was also thinking about running for the U.S. Senate or for governor of California, his home since he left Goldman Sachs. (He and his wife, Kat, own a mansion overlooking San Francisco Bay, a place whose marketing brochure showed a ballroom, five bedrooms, and two fireplaces. They also have an 1,800-acre cattle ranch down the coast.) In September, Steyer met Democratic consultant Kevin Mack, a direct-mail specialist who’s worked for Planned Parenthood and the AFL-CIO. “I sat down with him to talk about a whole range of things: ‘This is what it might look like to run for office, this is what it might look like to start a movement,’ ” Mack said.
Within days, they’d landed on a crusade for Steyer—something national and big. The logic was that Steyer could spend, say, $150 million to try to win a Senate seat—or he could start “running a national movement right now to hold this president accountable,” Mack said. “You do that for a hell of a lot less.”
Steyer decided to launch this movement outside the auspices of NextGen America, choosing the name Need to Impeach. He shot the fireplace spot and bought time on cable, including enemy territory: Fox News. It took mere days to catch the attention of his target. On Oct. 27 at 6:58 a.m., before the sun rose over Washington, Trump tweeted that Steyer was “wacky & totally unhinged.” Fox pulled the ad not long after. In a statement, the channel’s co-president cited “the strong negative reaction to their ad by our viewers.”
With that, Steyer had earned his spurs, complete with a pair of shiners to exhibit to the resistance. Signatures soared. He filmed more ads, set on a ranch, in front of the White House, by the Liberty Bell, and in Times Square, where he also paid for jumbo impeachment billboards. By February, Need to Impeach had about 40 staffers and a headquarters in a San Francisco Beaux Arts building. The group set up a war room for opposition research, plus a media arm and a legislative outreach team, and sent Steyer on a 30-stop tour to press his case across the U.S. The plan for November is to compare the organization’s list of millions against voter files, register anyone who isn’t signed up, and turn out everyone on Election Day.
Mack likes to say that Steyer’s list is now bigger than the National Rifle Association’s. But there are reasons why old hands such as Axelrod see the campaign as a billionaire’s vanity project. As with the ads, almost every Need to Impeach press release places Steyer front and center, announcing plans to file Freedom of Information Act requests about Trump or to mail 5,100 impeachment guides to 2018 candidates.
Still, Steyer has fans inside the impeachment cottage industry who are grateful for an ally rich enough to turn their ideas into zeitgeist. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor who teaches a class on Trump and has a book about impeachment coming out in May, credits Steyer with pushing the topic into late-night talk shows and dinner-table conversations. “He’s encouraging people to take seriously something that might have been too much in the background,” Tribe said. “People need to be conditioned to think about it. And he’s certainly put it on the national agenda in a really important way.”
As Steyer’s eyebrows bounced across the airwaves late last year, talk about his political ambitions grew louder. In January he stepped before a row of American flags in Washington to announce that he wouldn’t run for office in California, at least not in 2018. Instead, he said, he would double his impeachment spending and focus on registering millennial voters.
Watching him, though, you sense that the itch hasn’t subsided. His teams at NextGen and Need to Impeach include flacks and Obama veterans, even a body man who keeps his Honest Tea at the ready. He’s been known to invoke Lincoln twice in an hour while espousing policies that position him as a billionaire Bernie Sanders: single-payer health insurance, higher taxes for the rich, and clean energy.
In the past year, a titillated press has played are-they-running with entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey (after she delivered a galvanizing speech at the Golden Globe Awards in January), Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (after he hired two top Obama campaign operatives), and Starbucks Corp. Chairman Howard Schultz (whose unofficial side job is calling for nationwide transformation). Each eventually offered the ritual not-I.
Although Steyer did the same for 2018, he’s been coy about 2020, refusing to say whether he’ll run for the White House. He nevertheless gets exercised when asked about one hypothetical billionaire rival. “The day that Howard Schultz gets up with me at 4:25 to walk in Palmdale, I’m going to start thinking differently about him,” Steyer said, invoking a recent NextGen door-knocking trip in California. Schultz didn’t respond to an email asking for comment about Steyer, but Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, who’s said there’s a chance he’ll run, obliged. “Don’t know him. Never met him,” he wrote. Eight minutes later, Cuban sent a follow-up: “Don’t have any thoughts on him at all.”
Whether he’s thinking about a presidential run or not, Steyer is clearly enjoying himself. In Las Vegas he met with young immigrants at the University of Nevada, then headed out into the desert sun to ask students what they cared about. Afterward, sitting outside a campus cafe, he was practically glowing. He teased a reporter and laughed at his own zinger, then kept on laughing, clapping his hands and thumping the table before taking a breath and howling some more. Finally, 12 seconds on, he silenced himself with a final slam of the hand.
Moments later, talk of Trump flipped him to apocalyptic mode. But like a hero saddling up against formidable odds, he professed to be up to the task. “Politics is understood by very few people in the United States of America, and if you want to understand it, then I think you’ve got to put in your 10,000 hours,” he said. “I have, actually. Do the math.”
A week later, at a Presidents Day panel in Philadelphia, he was confronted by the possibility that five digits wouldn’t be enough. As Steyer sat on a stool in his jeans and cowboy boots, a man in the audience interrupted. “You’re talking about good and evil,” the man said, “and there are those of us who think that a billionaire who has $1.6 billion to throw around of his own money may be a threat to democracy.”
Steyer listened, hands on knees. “So you want me to address that?” he said.
“I think so,” the man replied.
Steyer’s mood seemed to dim. “OK, fine,” he said. “Let’s talk for a second about money in politics.”
“Let’s talk about you,” the man said. The room fell so quiet you could hear a throat clear. Before Steyer could address the expensive elephant in the room, a fan piped up: “Thank God you’re doing what you’re doing!” People clapped.
“Let me answer this question,” Steyer said, pointing at the heckler, forefinger wagging twice. “I think it is true that my ability to be heard is disproportionate based on the amount of money I have.” The man tried unsuccessfully to interrupt. “Look, I think we have a great system,” Steyer continued. “But we have very far from a perfect system.”
He was getting worked up. “If there was no money on the side of progressivism,” he said, “then, actually, we wouldn’t be able to organize against the people who are—”
He kept on speaking, but it was hard to hear him over the applause.
A lot of Democrats think the billionaire investor is the wrong man with the wrong idea. Ask him if he cares.
By April 25, 2018, 7:00 PM GMT+10
Narcissism was in the air in Washington. On a February night a few hundred yards from the White House, Tom Steyer, the hedge fund billionaire and political activist, had taken over three rooms at the National Press Club for a panel called Presidential Mental Health & Nuclear Weapons. On the dais, two psychiatrists, a psychologist, a Jungian author, and a warhead-security specialist were settling into blue chairs in front of a blue curtain. They were there to discuss the matter of Donald Trump’s ego. But Steyer, stepping to the lectern by their side, was unmistakably the star of the show. Applause broke out. He smiled and locked eyes with people around the room. Fans following the Facebook livestream sent thumbs-ups by the thousands as he and the five speakers set about explaining why Trump’s sadism, paranoia, unpredictability, and self-obsession make him ill-suited to nuclear weaponry.
Steyer has commanded the spotlight before. His fund, Farallon Capital Management, made him a finance kingpin, and he became a darling of environmentalists after quitting in 2012 to fight climate change full time. His third act began six months ago, when he paid for and starred in his first nationwide ad agitating for Trump’s impeachment. If you’ve watched cable news recently, you’ve probably seen him, 60 years old with a healthy tan and a look of grim concern, staring into your soul.
“I’m Tom Steyer, and like you, I’m a citizen who knows it’s up to us to do something,” he says in the first spot, his voice gravelly and grave. He’s sitting by a fireplace wearing a folksy-billionaire midnight-blue denim shirt. His name comes on screen above “American Citizen” in smaller letters. Strings murmur eerily as the camera closes in. “People in Congress and his own administration know that this president is a clear and present danger,” Steyer says. Within four months of the ad’s first airing, 5 million people had joined his campaign, Need to Impeach, providing names for an impeachment petition and email addresses for his budding list.
Steyer isn’t the first to claim there are grounds for booting Trump from office, but his enormous pools of wealth, outrage, and ambition mean he can do more than the members of Congress responsible for impeachment proceedings: He can spend the money required to stoke a fire and fan its flames until a real chance to burn down the administration presents itself. Thus far, he’s pledged about $40 million for Need to Impeach and an additional $30 million to get millennials into voting booths in November. He views himself as the leader of a movement to deliver America from evil—not one of those billionaires who cut checks merely to buy influence in Washington. Never mind that Steyer spent more on disclosed donations during the 2014 and 2016 election cycles than anyone else, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
His spending over the past year has bought him at least three kinds of opponents. The first are supporters of Trump, the celebrity-king who’s survived bedlam, bankruptcy, and scandal that would have wiped out, or at least embarrassed, mere mortals. To them, Steyer is a younger George Soros, pulling strings from the shadows. The second are fellow Democrats who think his fixation is distracting at best and harebrained at worst. They point out that no president has been removed via impeachment, that Democrats don’t have the congressional majority they would need to initiate the proceedings, and that polls show less than half the country wants them to try. Steyer’s third set of opponents are skeptics who see his vast resources as the symptom of a disease, not its cure. Does America, they ask, need one billionaire to save it from another?
At his event in Washington, Steyer toggled between his two dominant modes, apocalyptic and jubilant. Toward the end, he riffed on the motivational value of fear. “When you’re absolutely sure you’re right,” he said, “and you’re fighting for the things you think are most important, then there’s also great joy in being able, once you’re in it, to push as hard as you can.”
He stepped down from the dais and was mobbed. As aides tried to usher him out, Steyer hugged and high-fived. Only when a lawyer launched into a sales pitch for a project did Steyer start to extract himself—except, no, he couldn’t help but stick around to listen. When he finally moved on, an aide tried again to focus his attention, but Steyer swung around him to say something into a supporter’s ear. He leaned back to show he was listening as the man replied, then plunged back in, aiming his finger at the guy’s heart. He was still gabbing as he left, the long goodbye of a born candidate.
A chemical reaction seems to take place inside the brains of the megarich when their fortunes grow from extraordinarily big to inconceivably vast. It convinces some of them that they possess the power to solve a great challenge or crisis of the day. This might help explain why billionaires go on quests to colonize space (Jeff Bezos), slow the aging process (Larry Ellison), build flying cars (Larry Page), or bore holes into the Earth for transportation by tunnel (Elon Musk).
Steyer isn’t living out a sci-fi fantasy. A former prep school jock who says he crushes 300 crunches a day, he’s cast himself as the hero of a black-and-white Western, ever preparing for a showdown at high noon. He even wears cowboy boots these days, though he says it’s for the heel support.
PHOTOGRAPHER: NATHANAEL TURNER FOR BLOOMBERG BUSINESSWEEK
Before he can take down Trump, though, Steyer will have to claw past his own party’s sheriffs. Congressional minority leaders Nancy Pelosi of California and Chuck Schumer of New York are among those who’ve aired their displeasure with calls for impeachment, arguing that such talk is divisive and premature. David Axelrod, Barack Obama’s former senior adviser, has punched harder. “Steyer impeachment ads seem to me more of a vanity project,” he tweeted in November. “It is-at least [at] this point-an unhelpful message.” It took Steyer exactly one hour to slap back: “Unhelpful to whom, David?” He followed up a minute later with the less aristocratic “No fear.” The spat resumed a few months later. “Dems should NOT commit to impeachment,” Axelrod wrote on April 8. Steyer really didn’t like that. “Appeasing Mr. Trump and being polite is what’s wrong with the Establishment,” he replied. “Spare me,” Axelrod wrote back. “Don’t make the mistake of confusing your ad copy for a bill of impeachment.”
This kind of talk infuriates Steyer. A week before the Washington event, he was at a hotel bar in Las Vegas, banging his hand on a table. “There was no one in the United States who wanted to make a big deal out of impeachment!” he said. Some billionaires find Vegas irresistible for its bacchanalia, but Steyer was drinking seltzer with cranberry juice, light on the juice. He was in town to demand protections for young immigrants and to back an effort to make Nevada’s electricity greener.
Steyer’s most distinctive feature is a Roman nose, though it often cedes the stage to eyebrows that perform circus tricks when he gets excited. Trump gets them going. Steyer maintains that the president has disqualified himself from the land’s highest office by obstructing justice, conspiring with Russians, violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, undermining the free press, and simply being dangerously crazy. “We believe we have a gigantic threat to our democracy,” he said at the bar. “We believe this guy is very dangerous to the health and safety of American citizens.”
“When you’re absolutely sure you’re right and you’re fighting for the things you think are most important, then there’s also great joy in being able, once you’re in it, to push as hard as you can”
The “we” risked coming off as royal, but Steyer was reaching for the unifying vibe of a stump speech. Decades ago, he ran (successfully) for student body president at Phillips Exeter Academy, the New Hampshire school where Abraham Lincoln sent one of his sons. Steyer went from there to Yale, joining Morgan Stanley’s training program after graduation. He left, earned an MBA at Stanford, and in 1983 got a job at Goldman Sachs on Robert Rubin’s merger arbitrage team, which trained at least three future billionaires. Steyer quit a few years later for the only comparably glamorous job in finance: managing his own fund. While getting it up and running, he scored an intro to the investment firm Hellman & Friedman from Matthew Barger, a friend from Yale. “Tom’s possibly the only person I’ve ever met who I think could be president of the United States someday,” Barger told his colleagues at the time.
Hellman & Friedman helped Steyer set up the fund that would become Farallon, based in San Francisco and named for nearby islands that jut out of shark-infested waters. It made money every year for decades, buying up the junk bonds of distressed companies, betting on some stocks, shorting others, investing in real estate, and doing some private equity. Before 2008, when the financial crisis reached its nadir, Farallon’s main fund was returning an annual average of almost 15 percent, and the firm was overseeing more than $30 billion, making it one of the biggest hedge funds in the world.
It was also, to Steyer’s growing embarrassment, investing in oil, private prisons, subprime lending, and coal. By 2008 he’d grown alarmed about climate change; he was going to church more often and thinking seriously about politics. When a proposition to suspend some of California’s robust air pollution rules reached the state ballot in 2010, he donated $5 million to the campaign that ultimately defeated it. Two years later he left Farallon and went on to start NextGen Climate, a nonprofit with a super PAC arm, writing seven-digit checks that helped candidates willing to fight for the environment.
The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, to strip away long-standing limits on corporate money in politics had inaugurated an era of historic hospitality to politically motivated billionaires. Some of the cash they’ve spent has stayed hidden, but as far as disclosed donations go, Steyer reigns supreme. By that measure, he outspent even notable Republican kingmakers Charles and David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, and Robert Mercer during the 2014 and 2016 national campaigns. The $75 million Steyer spent in 2014 exceeded the total from the next three donors combined, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. (One of those three was Michael Bloomberg, founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which publishes Bloomberg Businessweek.) Steyer spent even more in 2016, about $91 million.
Bankers love to talk about their return on investment, but his was mediocre. Half of the eight Democrats he backed in big races in 2016, including Hillary Clinton, lost. That was slightly better than in 2014, when three of his seven candidates in Senate and gubernatorial races won. Steyer had a better run backing California ballot propositions, helping kill the 2010 air pollution plan and, two years later, spending more than $29 million on a measure that changed corporate tax rules and funneled money to green jobs.
“Politics is understood by very few people in the United States of America, and if you want to understand it, then I think you’ve got to put in your 10,000 hours. I have, actually. Do the math”
He didn’t see Trump coming. But only a few hours after the election, he published a pledge that he’d stand up to the incoming president. In July, six months into Trump’s term, something new took shape. Steyer changed NextGen Climate’s name to NextGen America and said its mission would expand to include health care, equality, and immigration issues.
That wasn’t enough for him, though. He was also thinking about running for the U.S. Senate or for governor of California, his home since he left Goldman Sachs. (He and his wife, Kat, own a mansion overlooking San Francisco Bay, a place whose marketing brochure showed a ballroom, five bedrooms, and two fireplaces. They also have an 1,800-acre cattle ranch down the coast.) In September, Steyer met Democratic consultant Kevin Mack, a direct-mail specialist who’s worked for Planned Parenthood and the AFL-CIO. “I sat down with him to talk about a whole range of things: ‘This is what it might look like to run for office, this is what it might look like to start a movement,’ ” Mack said.
Within days, they’d landed on a crusade for Steyer—something national and big. The logic was that Steyer could spend, say, $150 million to try to win a Senate seat—or he could start “running a national movement right now to hold this president accountable,” Mack said. “You do that for a hell of a lot less.”
Steyer decided to launch this movement outside the auspices of NextGen America, choosing the name Need to Impeach. He shot the fireplace spot and bought time on cable, including enemy territory: Fox News. It took mere days to catch the attention of his target. On Oct. 27 at 6:58 a.m., before the sun rose over Washington, Trump tweeted that Steyer was “wacky & totally unhinged.” Fox pulled the ad not long after. In a statement, the channel’s co-president cited “the strong negative reaction to their ad by our viewers.”
With that, Steyer had earned his spurs, complete with a pair of shiners to exhibit to the resistance. Signatures soared. He filmed more ads, set on a ranch, in front of the White House, by the Liberty Bell, and in Times Square, where he also paid for jumbo impeachment billboards. By February, Need to Impeach had about 40 staffers and a headquarters in a San Francisco Beaux Arts building. The group set up a war room for opposition research, plus a media arm and a legislative outreach team, and sent Steyer on a 30-stop tour to press his case across the U.S. The plan for November is to compare the organization’s list of millions against voter files, register anyone who isn’t signed up, and turn out everyone on Election Day.
Mack likes to say that Steyer’s list is now bigger than the National Rifle Association’s. But there are reasons why old hands such as Axelrod see the campaign as a billionaire’s vanity project. As with the ads, almost every Need to Impeach press release places Steyer front and center, announcing plans to file Freedom of Information Act requests about Trump or to mail 5,100 impeachment guides to 2018 candidates.
Still, Steyer has fans inside the impeachment cottage industry who are grateful for an ally rich enough to turn their ideas into zeitgeist. Laurence Tribe, a Harvard Law School professor who teaches a class on Trump and has a book about impeachment coming out in May, credits Steyer with pushing the topic into late-night talk shows and dinner-table conversations. “He’s encouraging people to take seriously something that might have been too much in the background,” Tribe said. “People need to be conditioned to think about it. And he’s certainly put it on the national agenda in a really important way.”
As Steyer’s eyebrows bounced across the airwaves late last year, talk about his political ambitions grew louder. In January he stepped before a row of American flags in Washington to announce that he wouldn’t run for office in California, at least not in 2018. Instead, he said, he would double his impeachment spending and focus on registering millennial voters.
Watching him, though, you sense that the itch hasn’t subsided. His teams at NextGen and Need to Impeach include flacks and Obama veterans, even a body man who keeps his Honest Tea at the ready. He’s been known to invoke Lincoln twice in an hour while espousing policies that position him as a billionaire Bernie Sanders: single-payer health insurance, higher taxes for the rich, and clean energy.
In the past year, a titillated press has played are-they-running with entertainment mogul Oprah Winfrey (after she delivered a galvanizing speech at the Golden Globe Awards in January), Facebook Inc. co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (after he hired two top Obama campaign operatives), and Starbucks Corp. Chairman Howard Schultz (whose unofficial side job is calling for nationwide transformation). Each eventually offered the ritual not-I.
Although Steyer did the same for 2018, he’s been coy about 2020, refusing to say whether he’ll run for the White House. He nevertheless gets exercised when asked about one hypothetical billionaire rival. “The day that Howard Schultz gets up with me at 4:25 to walk in Palmdale, I’m going to start thinking differently about him,” Steyer said, invoking a recent NextGen door-knocking trip in California. Schultz didn’t respond to an email asking for comment about Steyer, but Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban, who’s said there’s a chance he’ll run, obliged. “Don’t know him. Never met him,” he wrote. Eight minutes later, Cuban sent a follow-up: “Don’t have any thoughts on him at all.”
Whether he’s thinking about a presidential run or not, Steyer is clearly enjoying himself. In Las Vegas he met with young immigrants at the University of Nevada, then headed out into the desert sun to ask students what they cared about. Afterward, sitting outside a campus cafe, he was practically glowing. He teased a reporter and laughed at his own zinger, then kept on laughing, clapping his hands and thumping the table before taking a breath and howling some more. Finally, 12 seconds on, he silenced himself with a final slam of the hand.
Moments later, talk of Trump flipped him to apocalyptic mode. But like a hero saddling up against formidable odds, he professed to be up to the task. “Politics is understood by very few people in the United States of America, and if you want to understand it, then I think you’ve got to put in your 10,000 hours,” he said. “I have, actually. Do the math.”
A week later, at a Presidents Day panel in Philadelphia, he was confronted by the possibility that five digits wouldn’t be enough. As Steyer sat on a stool in his jeans and cowboy boots, a man in the audience interrupted. “You’re talking about good and evil,” the man said, “and there are those of us who think that a billionaire who has $1.6 billion to throw around of his own money may be a threat to democracy.”
Steyer listened, hands on knees. “So you want me to address that?” he said.
“I think so,” the man replied.
Steyer’s mood seemed to dim. “OK, fine,” he said. “Let’s talk for a second about money in politics.”
“Let’s talk about you,” the man said. The room fell so quiet you could hear a throat clear. Before Steyer could address the expensive elephant in the room, a fan piped up: “Thank God you’re doing what you’re doing!” People clapped.
“Let me answer this question,” Steyer said, pointing at the heckler, forefinger wagging twice. “I think it is true that my ability to be heard is disproportionate based on the amount of money I have.” The man tried unsuccessfully to interrupt. “Look, I think we have a great system,” Steyer continued. “But we have very far from a perfect system.”
He was getting worked up. “If there was no money on the side of progressivism,” he said, “then, actually, we wouldn’t be able to organize against the people who are—”
He kept on speaking, but it was hard to hear him over the applause.
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