Daily Kickoff
HAPPENING TONIGHT: Ivanka Trump visits The Shul of Bay Harbour in Surfside, Florida, for a conversation and Q&A on education. family issues and social structures. According to the invite, “Ivanka will start with her presentation and then will open to questions from the audience which need to be pre-submitted.” The event begins at 6:30pm and is invitation-only.
DEEP DIVE – Cover Story: “Inside the Trump Bunker, With 12 Days to Go” by Joshua Green and Sasha Issenberg: “Beginning last November, then ramping up in earnest when Trump became the Republican nominee, Kushner quietly built a sprawling digital fundraising database and social media campaign that’s become the locus of his father-in-law’s presidential bid… Most Republican Party officials ardently hope he’ll go away quietly if he loses. But given all that his campaign—and Kushner’s group especially—has been doing behind the scenes, it looks likelier that Trump and his lieutenants will stick around.”
–Trump TV: “According to a source close to Trump, the idea of a Trump TV network originated during the Republican primaries as a threat Kushner issued to Roger Ailes when Trump’s inner circle was unhappy with the tenor of Fox News’s coverage. The warring factions eventually reconciled. But Trump became enamored by the power of his draw after five media companies expressed interest. “One thing Jared always tells Donald is that if the New York Times and cable news mattered, he would be at 1 percent in the polls,” says the source.” [Businessweek]
“Trump Tells Supporters at Jerusalem Rally: Together, We Will Make America and Israel Safe Again” by Allison Kaplan Sommer: “I love Israel and honor and respect the Jewish tradition and it’s important we have a president who feels the same way,” Trump said in a pre-recorded video message to hundreds of Israeli and American supporters. “My administration will stand side-by-side with the Jewish people and Israel’s leaders to continue strengthening the bridges that connect, not only Jewish Americans and Israelis, but also all Americans and Israelis. Together we will stand up to enemies, like Iran, bent on destroying Israel and her people, together we will make America and Israel safe again.”[Haaretz; ToI]
“Trump vows to fight Israel’s enemies in Jerusalem pitch” by Oren Liebermann: “David Friedman, Trump’s policy advisor on Israel, spoke at the first gathering and accused the US State Department of being “anti-Israel and anti-Semitic for the past 70 years” because of its opposition to moving the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. “When Donald Trump has his first meeting with the lifers in the State Department, they’re going to say, ‘Well, you know Mr. Trump, with all due respect, you’ve only been president for a couple of days, we’ve been living here for the last 20 years and we don’t do it that way, we do it this way. We don’t move the embassy,'” Friedman said. “The reaction from Donald Trump will be, ‘You know what guys, you’re all fired,'” he added.” [CNN] • Mike Pence says “shalom” to Israel’s Republicans [YouTube]
“The coming shift: Hillary Clinton’s plans for Israel and Iran” by Michael Wilner: “Hillary Rodham Clinton is preparing to dramatically shift the tone and tenor of relations with Israel away from a publicly disputatious posture adopted by the Obama administration, according to several of her top aides… Her team describes a former diplomat eager to reassert where Israeli and American interests converge. President Clinton’s focus, they say, will be to reconstitute an environment in which Israelis are willing to follow US leadership, motivated by the belief that tactics from the last administration proved counterproductive to its well-intentioned pursuit of peace.” [JPost]
“Clinton’s Allies Promise a Tougher Line on Iran” by Eli Lake: “The next president has an opportunity in the Middle East to reassure wavering allies, to tell them: “We’re back and we’re going to lead again.” That sounds like something you might hear this month in an alternate reality, from the Rubio-Cheney campaign. But that is a quote from Michael Morell, a former deputy and acting director of the CIA and an adviser to Hillary Clinton’s campaign… Morell said the U.S. should consider a new set of sanctions against Iran to punish its “malign behavior in the region.” Morell’s approach matches the one laid out in June by Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s top national security adviser.” [Bloomberg]
“As U.N. Ignores Jewish Ties to Holy Site, Israel Produces Ancient Evidence” by Isabel Kershner: “The Israel Antiquities Authority produced a rare papyrus fragment from the seventh century B.C., written in ancient Hebrew, that mentions Jerusalem by name. Archaeologists interpreted the two lines of text on the papyrus as a concise shipping document reading, “From the king’s maidservant, from Na’arat, jars of wine, to Jerusalem.” In an Indiana Jones-like twist, the unusually preserved fragment had been plundered from a cave in the Judean Desert by a band of antiquities robbers, the antiquities authority said. The authority’s spokeswoman, Yoli Shwartz, denied that the publicizing of the fragment at a news conference here had anything to do with Israel’s diplomatic campaign against Unesco, calling the timing “completely coincidental.” The unveiling of the document had long been planned around an annual archaeology conference scheduled for Thursday at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.” [NYTimes]
“GOP Senators Call on Obama to Suspend Ties with UNESCO” by Jacob Kornbluh:“Given that U.S. law already forbids Amercian taxpayer money going to UNESCO, we urge your administration to join Israel in suspending ties to UNESCO,” the letter, signed by Senators Marco Rubio, Johnny Isakson, Mark Kirk and David Perdue, reads. “Because UNESCO continues to deviate from its founding mission and adopt one-sided, anti-Israel resolutions, it is time for the U.S. to stand with Israel and suspend our ties with UNESCO.” [JewishInsider]
JI INTERVIEW: Jason Kander, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Missouri, discusses his race against the incumbent Republican senator, Roy Blunt, and how his Jewish faith influenced his public service and political life. The outcome in red-state Missouri could help determine control of the Senate. “I don’t think about that all that much, because I’m going to be the exact same senator from Missouri no matter who’s in the majority or the minority and no matter which party owns the White House,” Kander told us in a phone interview. “It’s pretty clear that my opponent, Senator Blunt, is very focused on which political party does what, because that seems to be mostly what his approach to politics is. For me, it’s just really not something I think about, because it’s not going to change how I represent Missouri.”
On Iran deal: “I did not think that the Iran deal made sense for America as it was constructed. So far, I have not seen a lot of evidence to the contrary of my view, and at the same time I feel that I just hope that it turns out that both Senator Blunt and myself were wrong and that it does work out well. If that happens, that would be a good thing. So far, it hasn’t been particularly encouraging. I think, in the short term, what has to be done is there’s a deal in place that I didn’t really agree with, but that means that we should make sure that every single aspect of that deal is enforced as stringently as possible. Again, it’s not something I’m particularly optimistic about. That’s why I opposed it in the first place.”
On foreign policy as an issue in the election: “I think that what voters want is the same thing that I want, which is for foreign policy to be kept separate from domestic politics. There was a time in this country, the majority of history in fact, where politics stopped at the water’s edge and foreign policy was not something that got wrapped up in partisan political maneuvering. Unfortunately, now we seem to be in a time where we don’t even bother to lament the fact that politics doesn’t stop at the water’s edge. I strongly believe that when we allow partisan politics to dictate our foreign policy, no matter which party is in charge, it makes us less safe, because it hinders our ability to adequately respond to changing events around the world.”
On his first and only trip to Israel at age 26: “I went on a birthright trip, and it meant a lot to me. My wife came to the United States as a refugee from religious persecution in the Soviet Union, in Ukraine, when she was eight years old. Some of her family went to Israel, and so, for her, it was definitely a connection with her familiar history and with her Jewish identity through being able to visit family there. We went together. For me, it was really an opportunity for me to, and it really did this for me, to really connect with my faith and with my own personal identity as a Jew, because I can remember at one point being at a kibbutz and opening up the prayer book at Sabbath services and seeing that the first page of the prayer book was saying that the prayer book was there due to a sponsorship from a congregation in Kansas City, Missouri and in particular a certain congregant. That congregant was actually a distant cousin of mine. That, for me, was a moment that I’ve never forgotten because it definitely was an affirmation for me of just how connected I felt to other folks in the Jewish faith.” Read the full interview[JewishInsider]
Lisa Spies explains to Chris Cillizza why Donald Trump’s decision to stop fundraising is a huge problem for Republicans: “It is important to note that Hillary has a well-developed finance team and specifically surrogates that are doing events for her. Similar to Hillary’s traditional campaign, and in contrast to Trump, in 2012 around this time I could use Ambassador John Bolton to do targeted Jewish and pro-Israel fundraising events, and one of our big-league assets was Ann Romney, who we used to raise over $20 million through the “Women for Romney” effort. So while it isn’t unusual for the candidate to shift from fundraising events to political rallies in the closing weeks of a presidential campaign, the reason the Trump abandonment of fundraising events is such a big deal is because he doesn’t have an organization or surrogates to pick up the slack for him.” [WashPost]
John Podhoretz: “His refusal to help fill party coffers just as the last push for voters commences — which is an expensive process and requires cash on hand — is the perfect capper to 16 months in which Trump has gleefully terrorized weak-kneed Republican officials, forced them to comply with his wishes and then screwed them.” [NYPost]
“House GOP group rakes in checks even without more Adelson money” by Theodore Schleifer: “Perhaps concerning to national Republicans, casino titans Sheldon and Miriam Adelson — who have given almost half of the money that the group has raised this cycle — did not choose to reinvest in the super PAC during the homestretch… The largest donor to the Congressional Leadership Fund in the first three weeks of October was Stephen Schwarzman, the head of Blackstone, who gave $1.7 million.”[CNN]
“Behind the retreat of the Koch brothers’ operation” by Ken Vogel: “it has irked some of its donor constituencies who agree with the Kochs’ animating issue — fiscal conservatism — but disagree with the brothers on other issues. For example, some neoconservative donors who had previously given to the Koch network were upset by an event hosted by the Charles Koch Institute in mid-May. The event included a pair of academics whose writing about the power of the Israel lobby has led to charges of anti-Semitism. A fundraiser with knowledge of the situation said the event “was clearly an issue to Adelson. It was made evident that was a problem, but it’s impossible to know for sure if that’s why he didn’t give to the network.” [Politico]
“Trump booster Alex Jones: I’m not anti-Semitic, but Jews run an evil conspiracy” by Zack Beauchamp: “They run Uber, they run the health care, they’re going to scam you, they’re going to hurt you,” he said, per Media Matters. Jones listed a series of prominent people with Jewish backgrounds he believed to be working with this mafia — Rahm Emanuel, Madeleine Albright, George Soros — and accused them of being part of a “global, corporate combine” in alliance with the Japanese, Communists, and other evil factions. “I guess I better do some exposés on the Jewish mafia,” Jones said. He described Emanuel as “a guy foaming at the mouth with knives at Cabinet meetings, basically threatening the president, totally crazed. Who’s got his fingers in everything, screwing us over.” But, Jones insisted, “I’m not against Jews.” [Vox; MediaMatters]
SPOTLIGHT: “The Information’s Jessica Lessin on how she’s scaling an already-expensive subscription product” by Laura Hazard Owen: “The subscription-only technology site The Information is a niche product, at $399 a year. But now it’s expanding both up and down. Founder and CEO Jessica Lessin announced at the company’s Subscriber Summit last week that The Information is launching two new products: a student edition for $19.50 per month, and an extra-premium product called “The Information for Investors,” which is $10,000 a year.” [NiemanLab]
“Who was at the private Rolling Stones event? The secretary of state, for one” by Mark Shanahan: “The Rolling Stones played, not surprisingly, a hits-heavy set for the 150 or so folks invited to the private party thrown by Patriots owner Robert Kraft at Gillette Stadium Tuesday night. The band performed for a crowd that included Secretary of State John Kerry (and a phalanx of Secret Service agents), designer Tommy Hilfiger, and Combined Jewish Philanthropies boss Barry Shrage.”[BostonGlobe]
DESSERT: “Old Jewish beer gets new life in Quebec” by Neil Herland:“Nathan McNutt, master brewer at Montreal’s Resevoir Brewery, re-created Quebec’s first Jewish beer and named it L’affaire Hart beer. And for those who fear it might taste like the beer equivalent of Manischewitz, Kosher wine, they’re in for a surprise. “I find it absolutely fantastic,” said McNutt. “It’s a big malty beer, not hoppy, not bitter.” The recipe was sitting on the website of the Bibliotheque et Archives nationales du Québec and discovered by Toronto lawyer and beer blogger Gary Gillman. It caught the attention of the Museum of Jewish Montreal, which decided that someone had to brew it again. McNutt said it wasn’t an easy recipe to follow.” [CBC]
“Pardes Restaurant Has Closed in Brooklyn” by Dani Klein: “Brooklyn’s Pardes Restaurant may have been the most revered and innovative kosher restaurant, possibly ever, thanks in part to the creativity behind Chef Moses Wendel. The downtown Brooklyn restaurant announced this morning that it has permanently closed its doors.” [YeahThatsKosher; Facebook]
BIRTHDAYS: Producer and director of many popular films including Animal House, Meatballs, Stripes, Ghostbusters and Twins, Ivan Reitman turns 70… Rabbi at Miami Beach’s Temple Beth Sholom since 1985, Gary Glickstein turns 69… San Diego attorney, Gordon Gerson… Author, actress and comedienne, Fran Lebowitz turns 66… Television meteorologist, currently working for The Weather Channel, Stephanie Abrams turns 38…
