Dr. Duke’s not the only one who “kind of sort of endorsed” Trump. Read Professor Stephen Cohen’s words!
By Dr. Patrick Slattery — As listeners to the David Duke show know, we have spent a considerable amount of time discussing the implications of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. While there are a great many things he says that we strongly disagree with (and Dr. Duke pointedly has stopped short of a formal endorsement), we have recommended that people vote for him based on two policy considerations that have to be top priorities.
First, that he brought the immigration problem, which is fundamentally transforming the country in problematic ways, to the national debate and he alone has shown the determination to address it in meaningful ways. Second, and more urgently in my mind, all the candidates other than Trump would be almost certain to start a devastating war with Russia if they actually carried out their campaign pronouncements regarding Putin and the Syrian and Ukrainian crises. (Yes, even Bernie Sanders is guilty on this count if you pay enough attention.)
Unfortunately, the media is now trying to smear Donald Trump and all his supporters with the absurd and baseless “white supremacist” caricature that they have crafted of Dr. Duke.
It is the sad state of affairs in 21st Century America that we have political candidates who so cravenly auction off policy making to the highest bidder, and a media that so misinforms the public that they cannot even recognize the national interest.
Yet Donald Trump, with his financial independence, his media savvy, and his modicum of common sense, has distinguished himself in addressing frankly these two existential issues, albeit in his own particular vernacular. His message has obviously resonated with vast numbers of people who feel that they have been neglected in one way or another.
But it’s not just the inarticulate and downtrodden masses. Policy experts, who pay attention to the substance of what is being said and not just the style, cannot help but recognize the same positive attributes of the Trump candidacy that Dr. Duke has spoken of.
There is perhaps no better example than Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian History at Princeton University and New York University. If any leading Russia specialist over past several decades can look back at his body of work without shame, it is Professor Cohen. For the past two years, he has made weekly appearances on the John Batchelor Show out of WABC in New York. This is what he said at the end of the February 16 broadcast:
In my lifetime, in such moments of dire international crisis, I do not ever remember a presidential campaign or season where the candidates, on their own or because they were forced to by moderators or by the public or the media, won’t tell us what they think other than a bumper sticker like “I hate Putin and I won’t talk to him,” things like that, tell us what they would do if they were president today or tomorrow. Of the Republicans, since Rand Paul left the race, all of them simply say “we’ll punch Putin in the nose and that will solve the problem.” Only Donald Trump, also in bumper stickers, has said something different. He said:
1) He doesn’t accept all of these criminal allegations against Putin because there’s no proof, they’re just allegations, and in America we have due process.
2) He keeps saying that he’s a man who knows how to make a deal with Putin. So I interpret this for Donald Trump, who never uses the word, to mean “diplomacy.” That he would do diplomacy.Now what there’s been since the beginning of the New Cold War is a complete collapse of American diplomacy, or the militarization of American diplomacy towards Russia. Kerry is struggling, as we have already spoken, to demilitarize American diplomacy and to restore real negotiations. Trump in his odd way — “I’m the greatest deal maker in the world, I can make a deal with anybody, Putin doesn’t bother me, I’ll sit down and make him an offer he can’t refuse, and will make a deal and things will be okay.”
Alright, he probably doesn’t know exactly what he means. But I would prefer a president who tells me not that “I’m going to send more troops to Russia’s borders in order to provoke them into a war,” but a president who tell me “I’m going to sit down and discuss this with you and see if we can work it out.”
The bottom line is that we are precariously close to a confrontation that could become a civilization-ending World War III, and regardless of what you think about his personality or hairstyle, Donald Trump is the only candidate offering the alternative of avoiding a disastrous conflict with a country with which we have no actual clash of interests.
Seeing as be praised on the David Duke Show doesn’t seem to win kudos from the national media, I would like to apologize to Professor Cohen for any trouble that our quoting him may cause. I would also like to thank John Batchelor for bringing us 40 minutes of sanity in a mainstream media otherwise full of crudeness, lies, and nonsense.
