# Trump: Peace Candidate? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [March 11, 2016, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611 "2016-03-11T02:31:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/162 "2016-06-04T01:37:17Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Which political faction do you think Hillary Clinton, or for that matter John McCain or most establishment Democrats and Republicans, wants to see running Russia, in their ideal world? Which political faction do you think Hillary Clinton would like to see running North Korea? Probably not Kim Jong Ill-In-The-Head, right? Does this mean that Clinton is going to run an assassination gambit there, or…? Or, you know, what Johnny Ace said. This is pure paranoia, with absolutely no basis in reality. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/163 "2016-06-04T02:18:10Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Which political faction do you think Hillary Clinton would like to see running North Korea? Probably not Kim Jong Ill-In-The-Head, right? Does this mean that Clinton is going to run an assassination gambit there, or…? > > Or, you know, what Johnny Ace said. This is pure paranoia, with absolutely no basis in reality. John Kasich suggested pursuing regime change in North Korea, Clinton and him run in the same policy circles, so it isn’t too far fetched. **St. Claire** has cited the case of Boris Yeltsin. Clinton is an ideologue and has compared Putin to Hitler. I would consider the chance of Clinton attempting regime change in Russia very likely. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 11:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/164 "2016-06-04T11:33:36Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Which political faction do you think Hillary Clinton would like to see running North Korea? Probably not Kim Jong Ill-In-The-Head, right? Does this mean that Clinton is going to run an assassination gambit there, or…? > > Or, you know, what Johnny Ace said. This is pure paranoia, with absolutely no basis in reality. It’s not paranoia when her husband 's campaign advisers served as consultants for the American-backed candidates in the most critical election in recent Russian history, or when outfits like the National Endowment for Democracy exist with plenty of government funding. There are lots of ways to undermine a regime that you don’t like that stop short of assassination attempts, and during the Cold War, the United States became quite expert in using all of them. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 11:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/165 "2016-06-04T11:34:45Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Victoria Nuland, a Cheney and Clinton operative married to neoconservative Robert Kagan, is likely to be influential in a Clinton regime. She bragged about billions of dollars spent in Ukraine for “democracy promotion” before she was taped discussing her machinations in the Ukrainian coup. Russia has dealt with these NGOs operating within their country, but with hardcore ideologues like Nuland in positions of power, we are likely to see a ramping up of this activity. Well, Russia has tougher laws against organizations like that then they used to, so there’s that. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 11:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/166 "2016-06-04T11:40:58Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > You’re right. He wouldn’t expand NATO. The indications he has given imply that he doesn’t think highly of its continued existence. Now, I don’t know about you, but when it comes to discussions of the “peaceful” candidate, I’m pretty sure making significant unilateral changes to a long-standing anti-aggression pact is _not_ the mark of a “dove”. Trump is not a dove, per se (or a particularly good candidate), but, yes, I think getting rid of NATO would be a good idea, and might well make the world more peaceful. If the Ukraine was in NATO, we might be at war with Russia right now. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 3:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/167 "2016-06-04T15:09:49Z")
Foreign aid is always painted as ‘democracy promotion.’ This is classic conspiracy theory stuff. No real evidence, and lots of unfounded assumptions. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/168 "2016-06-04T15:52:53Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Foreign aid is always painted as ‘democracy promotion.’ This is classic conspiracy theory stuff. No real evidence, and lots of unfounded assumptions. Some of the same campaign consultants worked on the Yeltsin and Clinton campaigns. Do you really think they had nothing to do with each other (specifically, that the Clinton Administration didn’t encourage them to go to Russia and help keep Zyuganov out of power?) ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/169 "2016-06-04T16:22:18Z")
Do you really have any hard facts to back that up? Or just more innuendo? ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/170 "2016-06-04T16:44:45Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Do you really have any hard facts to back that up? Or just more innuendo? I have no hard evidence that the Clinton Administration sent money or personnel to the Yeltsin election campaign, no. I do know that the American political and media establishment was, in the main, _extremely_ pro-Yeltsin and anti-Zyuganov (some media outfit went to the extent of saying Yeltsin would have been morally justified in cheating in order to prevent the Communists from winning), so I consider it more likely than not that the Clinton administration intervened in some way or another. In any case, there is plenty of evidence that the United States government, including the Clinton and Obama regimes, has funded and continued to fund opposition activists and organizations in a number of countries, including Russia, largely through the NED. Here’s the list of NED-funded projects in Russia as of 2014 (Russia banned them the following year). ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/171 "2016-06-04T16:53:54Z")
[http://www.ned.org/region/eurasia/russia-2014/](http://www.ned.org/region/eurasia/russia-2014/) ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/172 "2016-06-04T17:34:35Z")
Yeah, the National Endowment for Democracy is a government agency that plots coups. Next we will hear that PBS brainwashes children with pro-oil propaganda, due to all those sponsorships from Exxon and whatnot. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/173 "2016-06-04T17:36:16Z")
Have you ever heard even _one_ word from Big Bird criticizing Big Oil or the military-industrial complex? ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/174 "2016-06-04T17:39:18Z")
> [@WillFarnaby](#): > > Victoria Nuland, a Cheney and Clinton operative… The other term for her job is “career diplomat.” ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/175 "2016-06-04T18:41:31Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > The other term for her job is “career diplomat.” or “exposed coup plotter” ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/176 "2016-06-04T19:46:11Z")
Yeah, I heard that on RT TV also. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/177 "2016-06-04T19:57:44Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Yeah, the National Endowment for Democracy is a government agency that plots coups. Next we will hear that PBS brainwashes children with pro-oil propaganda, due to all those sponsorships from Exxon and whatnot. I didn’t say they plotted coups, I said they had ‘regime change’ as one of their goals. There are lots of ways to accomplish regime change, after all. Most of my criticisms of the NED are based on work that _they explicitly boast about_ themselves. Here are a few examples: > **[Trojan Horse: The National Endowment for Democracy – William Blum](https://williamblum.org/chapters/rogue-state/trojan-horse-the-national-endowment-for-democracy)** > > How many Americans could identify the National Endowment for Democracy? An organization which often does exactly the opposite of what its name implies. The NED was set up in the early 1980s under Pres... ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2016, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/178 "2016-06-04T20:27:12Z")
Responding to this kind of nonsense (that the National Endowment for Democracy is sorta like the CIA) is like trying to debunk the X Files movie in which FEMA was the real power behind the American government. If one has had any interactions at all with either group, you’d know in a second that it just ain’t true. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/179 "2016-06-05T05:43:16Z")
Tinfoil hat time, folks. ---
**Author:** ![WillFarnaby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/willfarnaby/32/514_2.png) [@WillFarnaby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WillFarnaby)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/180 "2016-06-05T16:15:33Z")
Address the Nuland call. If there had been no Nuland call, you would be saying something like “it’s not like we have a taped conversation of Nuland plotting the coup.” We do have such a piece of evidence. Stratfor has called the coup “the most blatant in history”. Only the hardcore American Patriots and propaganda guzzlers believe it wasn’t a coup. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2016, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611/181 "2016-06-05T16:39:31Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > Have you ever heard even _one_ word from Big Bird criticizing Big Oil or the military-industrial complex? Big Bird is on the record of not speaking about issues like that. He doesn’t [want to ruffle any feathers](http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/romney-sesame-street-big-bird-debate-politics-us-17419288)… 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/trump-peace-candidate/748611.md?page=10)