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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2mos2MO
A close aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Donald Trump and Jared Kushner this week that Israel is rushing to advance a cease-fire deal in Lebanon, according to three current and former Israeli officials briefed on the meeting, with the aim of delivering an early foreign policy win to the president-elect.Ron Dermer, Netanyahu’s minister of strategic affairs, made Mar-a-Lago the first stop on his U.S. tour Sunday before traveling to the White House to update Biden administration officials on the state of Lebanon talks, a sign of how swiftly America’s political center of gravity has shifted after Trump’s electoral victory.“There is an understanding that Israel would gift something to Trump … that in January there will be an understanding about Lebanon,” an Israeli official said. Like others in this article, the official spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations.Trump has said he wants to bring an end to the wars in the Middle East, but he also told Netanyahu in a call last month to “do what you have to do” against Hezbollah and Hamas. It is unclear what impact, if any, the Lebanon proposal discussed at Mar-a-Lago would have on stalled cease-fire and hostage-release talks in Gaza.“Netanyahu has no loyalty to Biden and will be focused entirely on currying favor with Trump,” said Frank Lowenstein, a former special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations under President Barack Obama who served during the transition to the first Trump administration. If 2016 is any indication, he added, “Trump won’t hesitate to act like he’s already president when he sees an opportunity.”
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…1mo1MO
President-elect Donald Trump went out of his way to criticize Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over his decision to fire missiles into Russia, characterizing it as a “foolish decision” and even “the most dangerous” geopolitical development in recent days.Trump has met with Zelensky twice since winning the 2024 election. After speaking with the war leader in Paris last week, Trump declared that “He wants to make peace.”“He thinks it’s time, and [Vladimir] Putin should think it’s time because he’s lost — when you lose 700,000 people, it’s time. It’s not going to end until there’s a peace,” he continued.In his “Person of the Year” interview with Time, however, Trump took a detour from a question about Iran to blast Zelensky.“Iran recently plotted to have you assassinated. What are the chances of going to war with Iran during your next term?” asked Trump’s interlocutor.“Anything can happen. Anything can happen. It’s a very volatile situation,” replied Trump before turning his attention to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine.Elsewhere in the interview, Trump was asked if he would “commit to protecting Ukrainian sovereignty?”“I would like to see Ukraine—okay, ready? You have to go back a little bit further. It would have never happened if I were president. Would have never happened—” he answered.After being pressed about whether he would “abandon Ukraine,” Trump said, “I want to reach an agreement, and the only way you’re going to reach an agreement is not to abandon. You understand what that means, right?”
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Senior Democrats aren’t ruling out Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate for 2028. But not all of them are fully endorsing the idea, either.For party leaders, it’s a delicate balancing act. Some want to show respect for the outgoing vice president — but also share a sense of skepticism about her future prospects. For others, they have genuine enthusiasm for her candidacy and believe she lost because President Joe Biden simply exited the race too late.“I would be on board 100 percent with whatever she decides to do. I think she is a phenomenal person. I think she was a phenomenal candidate,” said Yvette Lewis, a member of the Democratic National Committee’s executive panel. “We were able to turn things around so quickly, and that’s a testament to her.”At a confab of DNC members last week, no party officials outright dismissed the idea of another Harris campaign, and some said they were willing to back her if she ran again.Shasti Conrad, chair of the Washington Democratic Party who was also at the event, said, “I certainly was so proud to support her and would love to do it again.”But, she added, the 2028 presidential primary will be “an open process,” meaning that Harris would face competition if she ran again.Outside the DNC gathering, some Democrats in battleground and red states are overtly panning the possibility.“LOL. I don’t think anyone is asking for a Harris third presidential campaign,” said Pennsylvania-based Democratic strategist Tommy McDonald. “Democrats need to build a party that can play everywhere, and Harris couldn’t win on a narrow map.”
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…3mos3MO
Earlier this fall, one of Joe Biden’s closest aides felt compelled to tell the president a hard truth about Kamala Harris’s run for the presidency: “You have more to lose than she does.” And now he’s lost it. Joe Biden cannot escape the fact that his four years in office paved the way for the return of Donald Trump. This is his legacy. Everything else is an asterisk.In the hours after Harris’s defeat, I called and texted members of Biden’s inner circle to hear their postmortems of the campaign. They sounded as deflated as the rest of the Democratic elite. They also had a worry of their own: Members of Biden’s clan continue to stoke the delusion that its paterfamilias would have won the election, and some of his advisers feared that he might publicly voice that deeply misguided view.Although the Biden advisers I spoke with were reluctant to say anything negative about Harris as a candidate, they did level critiques of her campaign, based on the months they’d spent strategizing in anticipation of the election. Embedded in their autopsies was their own unstated faith that they could have done better.One critique holds that Harris lost because she abandoned her most potent attack. Harris began the campaign portraying Trump as a stooge of corporate interests—and touted herself as a relentless scourge of Big Business. During the Democratic National Convention, speaker after speaker inveighed against Trump’s oligarchical allegiances. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York bellowed, “We have to help her win, because we know that Donald Trump would sell this country for a dollar if it meant lining his own pockets and greasing the palms of his Wall Street friends.”While Harris was stuck defending the Biden economy, and hobbled by lingering anger over inflation, attacking Big Business allowed her to go on the offense. Then, quite suddenly, this strain of populism disappeared. One Biden aide told me that Harris steered away from such hard-edged messaging at the urging of her brother-in-law, Tony West, Uber’s chief legal officer. (West did not immediately respond to a request for comment.) To win the support of CEOs, Harris jettisoned a strong argument that deflected attention from one of her weakest issues. Instead, the campaign elevated Mark Cuban as one of its chief surrogates, the very sort of rich guy she had recently attacked.
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Matt Gaetz announced he is withdrawing his name from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump's pick as attorney general, noting in a social media post that his nomination had become a distraction.Gaetz held multiple meetings with GOP senators over the past couple of days as he sought to game out his chances of getting confirmed.
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@ISIDEWITH submitted…2 days2D
TikTok went dark for American users in an unprecedented display of the U.S.-China divide over technology and national security.The app started halting service Saturday night for 170 million users in its most important market shortly before a law took effect requiring it to shed its Chinese ownership or close in the U.S. It marked the first time the U.S. government has compelled the closure of such a widely used app, and disrupted millions of American businesses and social-media entrepreneurs who use TikTok to connect with customers and fans.TikTok users started seeing a message late Saturday saying, “Sorry, TikTok isn’t available right now.”“A law banning TikTok has been enacted in the U.S. Unfortunately, that means you can’t use TikTok for now. We are fortunate that President Trump has indicated that he will work with us on a solution to reinstate TikTok once he takes office. Please stay tuned!” There is an option under the message to get more information, and clicking brings users to a link to download their data. The app wasn’t available to download from Apple or Google’s app stores.TikTok’s disappearance could be brief, however. President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday said he would likely give TikTok a 90-day extension from the potential ban after he takes office Monday. On Sunday morning, Trump posted on social media in all capital letters, “SAVE TIKTOK!”TikTok Chief Executive Shou Chew is scheduled to attend Trump’s inauguration, along with U.S. tech luminaries including Mark Zuckerberg, whose Meta Platforms owns TikTok rival Instagram.Trump’s comments were the latest in a flurry of last-minute statements that capped a yearslong saga complicated by U.S. presidential politics, conflicting geopolitical interests and the ambiguities surrounding enforcement of the law, which outlines hefty penalties for noncompliance. Before positioning himself as TikTok’s potential savior, Trump tried to ban TikTok in his first term. President Biden, who signed the bipartisan law last April, ended his term with aides saying he wouldn’t enforce it on his final day in office.TikTok and parent ByteDance have portrayed themselves as independent of China, but their ability to do any divestiture deal to satisfy the U.S. law has been constrained by Beijing. In recent days, Chinese officials have internally discussed options including allowing a trusted non-Chinese party such as Elon Musk to invest in or take control of TikTok’s U.S. operations.
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