tvshow:meet the press

Trump Shrugs Off Khashoggi Killing by Ally Saudi Arabia - The New York Times
▻https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/23/us/politics/trump-khashoggi-killing-saudi-arabia.html

https://static01.nyt.com/images/2019/06/23/us/23DC-TRUMP/23DC-TRUMP-facebookJumbo.jpg

But in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump said the episode had already been thoroughly investigated. He said the Middle East is “a vicious, hostile place” and noted that Saudi Arabia is an important trading partner with the United States.

“I only say they spend $400 to $450 billion over a period of time, all money, all jobs, buying equipment,” the president told Chuck Todd, the show’s moderator. “I’m not like a fool that says, ‘We don’t want to do business with them.’ And by the way, if they don’t do business with us, you know what they do? They’ll do business with the Russians or with the Chinese.”

#usa #trump #cynisme

Tillerson: Trump considering impact of U.S. embassy move on peace process -

In first, the U.S. secretary of state publicly admits that the embassy move is being weighed as part of the larger effort to reach an Israeli-Palestinian agreement

Amir Tibon and Barak Ravid May 14, 2017
read more: ▻http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.789140

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Sunday that while President Donald Trump still hasn’t made a decision on whether or not he will move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, an important part of his deliberations is how such a move would impact the Trump administration’s efforts to reach an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.
Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tillerson explained that “the president, I think rightly, has taken a very deliberative approach to understanding the issue itself, listening to input from all interested parties in the region, and understanding, in the context of a peace initiative, what impact would such a move have.”
This is the first time that a senior figure in the Trump administration has admitted publicly that the embassy move, a promise Trump made during the election campaign, is being weighed as part of the larger effort to reach a peace agreement. Tillerson added further that Trump was “being very careful to understand how such a decision would impact a peace process.” In recent weeks, press reports in Israel indicated that the Trump administration was not planning to move the embassy.
Tillerson also said that the president wants to understand “whether Israel views it as being helpful to a peace initiative or perhaps as a distraction,” hinting at possible disagreements on the issue within the Israeli government. The Israeli security establishment and the army have warned in the past that moving the embassy could lead to increased violence on the ground in Jerusalem and the West Bank.

#Israël #Jérusalem #Etats-Unis

Saudi ambassador: Conflict in Yemen is not a proxy war with Iran - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/03/29/saudi-ambassador-conflict-in-yemen-is-not-a-proxy-war-with-iran

Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, on Sunday denied that the growing sectarian conflict in Yemen represents a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

“This is a war to protect the people of Yemen and defend its legitimate government from a group that is allied and supported by Hezbollah, but I wouldn’t call it a proxy war,” the ambassador said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to the Lebanese Shiite militia.

Asked whether Saudi Arabia and Iran can coexist simultaneously as regional powers, Jubeir said the Iranian government has stood in the way of peace.

“It’s really up to the Iranians,” he said. “We have encountered many problems — aggression by Iran against the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There has not been one incident of Saudi aggression against Iran. We have extended our hand in friendship to the Iranians, and it’s been rejected for the past 35 years.”

BBC News - Iran nuclear talks : US ’not stupid’ - John Kerry
▻http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-24887750

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that Washington continues to be sceptical about Iran’s willingness to roll back its nuclear programme.

“We are not blind, and I don’t think we’re stupid,” Mr Kerry told NBC’s Meet the Press programme.

His comments come a day after talks between Iran and six world powers on the programme ended without resolution.

The Israeli PM said he was trying to persuade leaders of the powers not to rush into a “bad agreement”.

Benjamin Netanyahu said he recognised that there was a “strong desire” for a deal with Iran, but that governments should wait and “seriously consider things”.

The West has long suspected Iran of aspiring to have nuclear weapons but Tehran says it is only enriching uranium for civil purposes.

Under the deal floated in Geneva, Iran could freeze expansion of its nuclear activity in return for limited relief from international sanctions which have been in place for years.
(...)
Mr Kerry said the US was “absolutely determined” that the deal would be a good one.

“Some of the most serious and capable, expert people in our government, who have spent a lifetime dealing both with Iran as well as with nuclear weapon and nuclear armament and proliferation, are engaged in our negotiation,” he said.

“I think we have a pretty strong sense of how to measure whether or not we are acting in the interests of our country and of the globe, and particularly of our allies like Israel and Gulf states and others in the region.”

From Tom Paine to Glenn Greenwald, we need partisan journalism | Jack Shafer
▻http://blogs.reuters.com/jackshafer/2013/07/16/from-tom-paine-to-glenn-greenwald-we-need-partisan-journalism

New York Times business journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin called for the arrest of Greenwald (he later apologized) and Meet the Press host David Gregory asked with a straight face if he shouldn’t “be charged with a crime.” NBC’s Chuck Todd and the Washington Post‘s Walter Pincus and Paul Farhi also asked if Greenwald hadn’t shape-shifted himself to some non-journalistic precinct with his work.

The reactions by Sorkin, Gregory, Todd, Pincus, Farhi, and others betray — dare I say it? — a sad devotion to the corporatist ideal of what journalism can be and — I don’t have any problem saying it — a painful lack of historical understanding of American journalism. You don’t have to be a scholar or a historian to appreciate the hundreds of flavors our journalism has come in over the centuries; just fan the pages of Christopher B. Daly’s book Covering America: A Narrative History of a Nation’s Journalism for yourself. American journalism began in earnest as a rebellion against the state, and just about the only people asking if its practitioners belonged in jail were those beholden to the British overlords. Or consider the pamphleteers, most notably Tom Paine, whose unsigned screed Common Sense “shook the world,” as Daly put it.

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My paean to activist and partisan journalism does not include the output of the columnists and other hacks who arrange their copy to please their Democratic or Republican Party patrons. (You know who you are.) Nor do I favor the partisan journalists who insult reader intelligence by cherry-picking the evidence, debate-club style, to win the day for their comrades. (...) ask yourself: Where would we be without our partisan journalists?