Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Team Obama keeps laying new land mines for Trump

For all President Obama’s claims to want a smooth transition to the new administration, his people have been laying plenty of land mines for Team Trump.
Some are plainly Obama’s doing, from that anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution to slamming the door on Cuban refugees. But the nastier ones — the Justice Department inspector general probe of FBI chief Jim Comey’s announcements on the Clinton email investigation, and the leak about that “Russian dossier” — have more deniability.
The Cuba move may be the most ironic, given fears on the left that Trump would close the door on refugees. Yet here’s Obama, denying to Cubans who flee the island dictatorship the protection — instituted by President Bill Clinton in 1995 — of legal residency if they make it to US soil.
At least that one’s easy for the next president to reverse — though it’ll give his critics another chance to sound the alarm about his policies on refugees from terror-hotspot countries, which is likely the real point.
The UN move, by contrast, will complicate US efforts at Middle East peace for years, maybe decades — by hamstringing any effort to get Israel and the Palestinians to find compromise on all their outstanding issues. It’s also a direct strike at the pro-Israel policies Team Trump had signaled. READ MORE