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29 Oct, 11 tweets, 3 min read
1. There has always been a ton of smoke around the relationship between Trump and Erdogan, two of the most corrupt leaders in the world. Whatever happens in November, this has to be investigated and people held accountable.
2. There was the issue of Flynn being a paid representative of Turkey while he was advising Trump, focused on Erdogan's obsession with getting custody of the U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. nytimes.com/2017/03/10/us/…
3. I was in meetings when Erdogan would demand that Obama send Gulen to Turkey. Obama would have to firmly and patiently explain that even the President cannot interfere in the US Justice system (norms! how quaint)
4. There's the sketchy work that Rudy Giuliani has done, another case of Trump's close associates grifting. theguardian.com/us-news/2019/o…
5. There's Trump's own considerable business interests in Turkey. nbcnews.com/politics/trump…
6. Interestingly, there are reports that Erdogan's notoriously corrupt son-in-law is a channel of communication with Trump's son-in-law, who manages notable diplomatic accounts like Saudi Arabia and Turkey. nytimes.com/2019/11/12/us/…
7. There's the strange reporting that Erdogan and Trump speak with a bizarre frequency and outside of normal bilateral channels. businessinsider.com/erdogan-report…
8. This personal channel was apparently decisive when Trump abandoned the Kurds who helped us fight ISIS, a decision that served precisely zero U.S. national security interest. nbcnews.com/news/world/for…
9. Then there was the abrupt and alarming decision to oust the most important U.S. Attorney in the country, reportedly in part bc of investigations into a Turkish bank. nytimes.com/2020/06/20/nyr…
10. The simple fact is this: corruption is the lubricant of authoritarianism around the world, the connective tissue between many of the autocrats we see in power today. They claim to be nationalists, but they put their own profit first.
11. We have to get to the bottom of this both for the sake of accountability, but also because it's essential to combat the way in which corruption has undermined democracy.

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More from @brhodes

Ben Rhodes Profile picture
20 Oct
1. It's hard to overstate what callous disregard this shows for the safety of our diplomats and intelligence officers, and how much the obsession with undoing Obama's Cuba policy while currying favor with Russia and China drove Trump's policy. nytimes.com/2020/10/19/us/…
2. Many of us who worked on Cuba in the Obama Administration suspected Russian involvement from the beginning. When I conducted secret negotiations with the Cubans, I was occasionally tailed by Russians.
3. This included being followed to a Canadian hotel where I had a secret meeting with Cuban officials in 2014, and being tailed by Russians in Havana.
Read 12 tweets
Ben Rhodes Profile picture
11 Jul
The collapse of governance during COVID-19 and corruption of democracy demands that we vote Republicans out up and down the ballot and support candidates who will put people first. Here are some good people to support and things to do, starting here: votesaveamerica.com
In Michigan (my adopted state!) here are three amazing Democrats with strong national security backgrounds and deep local roots: secure.actblue.com/donate/fp4m
Today I'm happy to be doing a fundraiser in support of exactly the kind of brilliant next-generation leader we need - Yassamin has already helped fight climate change at the global level and now she's gone home to make change in Phoenix: secure.numero.ai/contribute/yas…
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Ben Rhodes Profile picture
28 Jun
1. I have trouble believing it, but as someone who got the presidential daily briefing for more than 7 years the idea that a POTUS wouldn’t be briefed on a Russian bounty on US troops is even more alarming.
2. Given the hundreds of pieces of intel that would be briefed to him in this period, did the intel community think Trump wouldn’t care? That strikes at the heart of his responsibility as commander in chief.
3. Did they think he wouldn’t do anything in response or wouldn’t want to be bothered? That raises questions about whether he cares about our troops.
Read 9 tweets
Ben Rhodes Profile picture
27 Apr
1. Informed by the experience of the 08 financial crisis, the one thing we can be sure of about the COVID-19 crisis - including the economic and political fallout - is that it will be bigger and less predictable than people anticipate .
2. An economic shock of this size and scale will ripple for a long time, impacting not just businesses but peoples' own sense of how they relate to the economy, how their family can have any security, and what they want to do with their lives.
3. Governments - especially our own - are not well positioned to respond. Trump's tax bill emptied out the coffers. We've had low rates. The Fed has already fired a bunch of bullets. And the emergency spending feels like a drop in an ocean.
Read 14 tweets
Ben Rhodes Profile picture
30 Sep 19
1. As Republicans have (so far) shown no willingness to break from Trump, it's worth considering how much worse things could get under Trump if he continues to have this kind of firewall of propaganda and defense from the right, no matter what he does.
2. Consider the shifting of norms of the presidency from '17 to '19. Trump attacked his own State Dept and IC, turned the Justice Dept into his private law firm, used State and DoJ to go after his political opponents, and shifted US foreign policy to acting on behalf of dictators
3. He has also stonewalled Congress, ignored laws they passed, threatened violence against his opponents (with real consequences), politicized the US military, and increasingly surrounded himself with compliant yes men.
Read 14 tweets
Ben Rhodes Profile picture
17 Apr 19
1/ One big problem with how foreign policy is filtered through the Washington political and media filter is that action is treated as a result and not as a means to an end. This is how one looks "tough" without accomplishing anything.
2/ The purpose of Trump's hardline Cuba policy is to change the Cuban regime. It will fail to do that, just as 60 years of an Embargo failed to change the Cuban regime.
3 / Instead, Trump's policy will only further entrench the Cuban Communist Party, which is perfectly comfortable being an antagonist to a right-wing American government.
Read 14 tweets

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