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[Make sure to read Joseph Klein’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
New York Times foreign policy columnist Thomas Friedman wrote an opinion piece published by the New York Times on October 4th, entitled “How Four Leaders Are Turning the World Upside Down.” The four leaders whom Mr. Friedman lumped together in a disgusting display of moral equivalence were Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, former U.S. President Donald Trump, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He accused them all of having “created massive disruptions inside and outside their countries based on pure self-interest, rather than the interests of their people.”
Thomas Friedman’s condemnations of Putin and Xi were spot on, but he went off the rails completely by including Netanyahu and Trump on his list and claiming that Donald Trump “is the most dangerous of the four.” Friedman left out altogether North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un who has ramped up North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile testing and launches. And he skipped over Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose regime is arming Russia in Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine and is providing military and financial support to Islamist terrorists.
Mr. Friedman has written several columns that have taken Prime Minister Netanyahu to task, mostly because of what he absurdly has labeled “a judicial coup led by Netanyahu.” The so-called “judicial coup” was legislation approved by Israel’s duly elected Knesset to rein in the runaway power of unelected Israeli Supreme Court judges. The judges have taken it upon themselves to invalidate laws passed by the Knesset because the judges believed the laws were not “reasonable.”
Israel’s judiciary arrogated to itself the power to override legislation and government executive actions based on the judges’ subjective judgments that not all the related aspects of the policy issues involved were adequately considered and accorded their proper weight. The judges went far beyond deciding whether the Knesset or government officials exceeded their authority as defined in Israel’s Basic Laws or arbitrarily committed an outrageous act that was grossly unjust. And they went far beyond deciding whether the Knesset or government officials unduly infringed on a person’s fundamental human rights to dignity and liberty as spelled out in the Basic Laws. Instead of serving as an independent check to ensure that these limits on legislative and executive powers were not exceeded, the Israeli Supreme Court judges have turned themselves into an unelected super-legislative branch.
Prime Minister Netanyahu and his duly elected governing coalition were attempting to restore democracy through the Israeli people’s elected representatives against a judicial “coup.”
Moreover, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s government did not conduct mass arrests and imprisonment of peaceful protesters. Freedom of speech and assembly of those who disagreed with the legislation to reform Israel’s judicial system were respected. Presidents Putin and Xi, on the other hand, lock up peaceful dissenters, if not make them disappear for good. Putting Israel’s prime minister on the same list as these two brutal dictators is an abomination.
Prime Minister Netanyahu has also proven to be a peacemaker, both by entering into the Abraham Accords and attempting to bring Israel and Saudi Arabia together in what would be an historic agreement to establish diplomatic recognition between the two former enemies. President Putin is a warmonger who invaded Ukraine and threatens other sovereign countries. President Xi is putting increased military pressure on Taiwan and encroaching on other countries’ rights in the South China Sea.
Mr. Friedman’s claim that Donald Trump “is the most dangerous of the four” world leaders that he listed in his column demonstrates how his extreme case of Trump derangement syndrome has blinded him to any semblance of the truth.
Friedman complains that Trump has ignored the troublemakers in the world and “has praised the troublemakers, including Putin. It’s what makes the prospect of another Trump presidency so frightening, so reckless and so incomprehensible.”
Donald Trump’s actions as president tell a different story than Thomas Friedman’s anti-Trump spin.
President Trump removed the restraints on the military so that it could decimate ISIS. He also ordered the killings of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as well as Qasem Soleimani, the Iranian regime’s vicious leader of the terrorist-sponsoring Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its ruthless Quds Force. Far from ignoring these troublemakers who represented major threats to America and its allies, Trump used the military might of the United States to wipe them out.
President Trump provided Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, which President Obama had refused to do. Vladimir Putin grabbed Crimea during the Obama administration and invaded Ukraine during the Biden administration, not during the Trump administration. Putin took advantage of the weaknesses he saw in both Obama and Biden to make his aggressive moves but decided not to test Trump too far because he did not know how Trump would react.
As for China, President Trump pushed back against the regime, particularly when it came to trade by imposing stiff tariffs on Chinese imports. The Trump administration also “increased the frequency of U.S. Navy ships sailing through the Taiwan Strait, and sold arms to Taiwan with greater regularity — and less concern about China’s objections — than past administrations,” reported an NPR international correspondent who covers Chinese affairs.
President Biden has talked a tough game by indicating he would support sending U.S. troops to help Taiwan defend itself if China attacked Taiwan, but his aides walked back Biden’s bluster each time. After witnessing President Biden’s disastrous retreat from Afghanistan, President Xi sized up President Biden as a weak president. Xi has stepped up his air and maritime military maneuvers around Taiwan and his threats against Taiwan since President Biden took office.
“When the world becomes this chaotic,” Thomas Friedman wrote, “the rest of the world depends on the United States to take the lead in containing the trouble and opposing the troublemakers.” That is a fair statement, but Friedman has gone after the wrong U.S. president for not taking on the troublemakers as the leader of the free world by blaming Trump.
Joe Biden, not Donald Trump, has been the president who has allowed Russia and China, as well as Iran and North Korea, to foment serious trouble without facing any major consequences. As a result, the world has become far more chaotic and dangerous since President Biden took office.
Friedman has always been a pure propagandist. His slimey war against what is true and right is contemptible and pernicious. Par for the course at the NY Times.
He has the worst case of TDS, yet! He ought to see if John Travolta will lend him his Bubble Suit!
Only the antisemitic, Israel-hating New York Times would give this nitwit and platform for spreading his personal hate and distorted views of reality.
Thomas Friedman has favored Palestinian terrorists against Israel since college. His works have been consistently against Israel. The “nicest” thing he wrote about Israel is that if it is just a nation like all others it is wrong. He pretends that it should have such high ethical aspirations that it should reject continuing to exist if it is not better than all others. That portrays its national defense as a crime. His aim is to encourage the treatment of Israel to be based on standards not applied to any other nation.
Wait, I thought Friedman loved Xi?
I know, right? But now he can use him to take a swipe at Trump and Bibi for the bigoted readership the NYT calls “progressive” (which is a euphemism for commies).
He does, that’s what makes this screed of his so absurd. He said he wishes we were more like the PRC.
Friedman has zero expertise on any issue and is an America hating and self hating Jew
And married to a very wealthy woman.
It figures. He must be a model for investments for commies who read that rag.
Change out Trump and Netanyahu for TaliBiden and Khanenei and it would be more accurate. For Friedman to be 50% right is rare, he is usually less than 10% correct
Didn’t Friedman voice the wish that America could be more like China, even for just one day?
He lamented that we don’t have the “efficiency” of China’s dictatorship 🇨🇳.
A Reductio Ad Hitlerum is the inevitable next step.
Hilarious. This clown wouldn’t, as the old expression went, know sh*t from Shinola. Hey, let’s put him in Red China for a year and then Israel for the same amount and let HIM decide based upon reality.
Yes.
If Hillary can threaten us, then we should be able to threaten her and them.
Once more, Friedman documents both his animus towards Netanyahu and his inability to render a disinterested, informed, and fair-minded assessment of Israel and its current government. Little wonder the Editors of the Times give Tommy so much space on its editorial pages.
If Friedman was doing Simchat Torah celebrations (where one is supposed to be so drunk with joy that they cannot tell the difference between the Ayatollah and Mother Teresa) then I understand.
The problem is that this moronic, stupid man has a history of hostility towards conservatives – especially successful ones, wherever they reside.
REALITY?
Friedman is a modern-day, wanna-be Walter Durante – the lying, deceiving criminal reporter who wrote puff pieces on Stalin while not reporting his mass crimes against humanity. His role model. Also notice the little “fuhrer” style mustache – another hallmark of this evil POS.
He is as “Jewish” (in name only) as Soros and Adam Schiff are…
How does the wretched and despicably dishonest Friedman feel about Fatah’s leader and Arab Muslim despot, Abbas, who has remained in power for decades beyond his initial elected term, and, whose corruption and embezzlement have impoverished his constituents and kept them mired in misery?
Oh, well you see, that’s not his problem. He perceives Abbas as a “dark-skinned” dictator and therefore incapable of being held to Friedman’s and the NYT reading public’s lofty standards. It’s racism, but when challenged he will call it something else and quickly change the subject. Those standards only apply to people who tried to rid the West of the putrid savagery encouraged amongst the “Palestinian” population. That they feed their children antisemitism for breakfast, Tommy blames on Jews who would just like these Arabs to stop their lethal narratives and to stop paying their children to murder people. Of course Tom’s favorite, “upright” president, Joe Biden, likes to slip the murder payola under the table to Abbas.
“Friedman complains that Trump has ignored the troublemakers in the world and “has praised the troublemakers, …”
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Has Friedman paid attention to the vile Dhimmi-crats’s decades-long coddling of and playing footsie with Iran’s despots, a policy dating back the tenure of narcissist-incompetent, Obama? How about crime boss and dotard-marionette, Biden’s perennial downplaying of the brazen belligerence and malignant behavior of the Chinese communist regime, stating that China is an alleged “competitor” of the U.S., as opposed to an enemy?
Friedman’s dishonesty and selective memory are shameful.
Thomas Friedman is a pompous idiot. It is not name calling, I am going to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. There are many other people that I strongly disagree with, but I have no proof that they are idiots.
Thomas Friedman became famous during the 1982 Lebanese War. His reports from Beirut were very influential. After reporting on massacres in Palestinian camps Sabra and Shatila by Christian Phalangists allied with Israel, he even tried to cause the fall of the Israeli government.
Years later, he published a book “From Beirut to Jerusalem” which included his past NYT articles. I looked into this book to see if he updated information. By that time it became known that the commander of the Phalangists, Elie Hobeika, was a Syrian agent. Israel did not know about that and expected joint cooperation. Instead Hobeika organized a massacre that suited Syrians because it resulted in breakup of Christian Militia with Israel.
There had been no mention of Elie Hobeika and his role in this book, but I found some other interesting details.
Friedman wrote how he visited Sabra and Shatila three days after the fighting. He wrote that he found there horses with blown bellies. He wrote that Phalangists were so vicious that they cut horse bellies with AK-47 fire.
First, imagine how you can cut through a thick horse hide. You have to stand very close and evenly shoot your bullets in a straight line. You have to take all S that flies back into your face and one magazine can make 12” cut at most.
Of course, people who had seen wars and dead horses, and even people who had only read books about wars know that if you leave a dead horse in warm weather, her belly blows up.
Friedman and his NYT editors, and editors of his book did not know anything.
Gullible idiot Friedman just repeated all the long tales that Palestinians told him and then started a crusade against Israel. Can you believe anything that Friedman ever wrote?
So, he believes himself to be an expert on every subject and stupid and ignorant liberals admire him.
06/19/2016
Thomas Friedman, as political hack, can best be compared to propagandists like Josef Goebbels of the Soviet media in general. To the extent that his message is successful genocide will follow, for if Trump is the most evil man in the world, the people that support him are an evil force that must be eradicated.
Similarly Hillary Clinton speaks of re-education camps for MAGA followers.
He knows what he is doing. Socialism is founded in resentment for those who have more, and a resentful people are a cruel people. He lust for the eradication of the right in America.
And I compare Joe Biden to Hiler, Stalin and Mao and Castro as well
Sorry but you’re wrong. I will compare Biden to a poor old senile old man being used by the DeepState and the Swamp as a puppet. Nothing more and nothing less.
Its not Trump and Netanyahu’s policies that promote terrorism, firebombs, rampage, rape, invasions, and kidnapping people. Its the left and their upside down ideologies of hate and anti-semetism. Every single war monger and oligarch is intent on stealing from other nations and destroying their. infrastructure. Its total calousnes, hatred, and disregard for the rights and freedoms of other nations,.