‘NYT’ and ‘MSNBC’ leave Marco Rubio backer’s Israel agenda out of the story

There are a lot of elephants running around the room in this piece in the New York Times today titled, “Billionaire lifts Marco Rubio, Politically and Personally.”

Senator Rubio has vaulted to the front of the Republican presidential field, and the billionaire who is expected to spend $10 million to try and make him president is Norman Braman, 82, South Florida auto dealer and professional sports team owner. The fact that Braman is a big Israel supporter appears just once in the (interminable) piece: his “ardent commitment to Israel.” We don’t learn that a few days after Rubio was elected to the Senate, in 2010, he made his first trip to Israel and met Braman and his family there. We don’t learn that Braman is Jewish– and that he believes that Israel’s creation revolutionized Jewish life in the west.

And so the authors, Michael Barbaro and Steve Eder can get away with this stretcher:

Pressed on his financial ties to Mr. Braman, Mr. Rubio said in an interview that he saw no ethical issue. “What is the conflict?” he asked. “I don’t ever recall Norman Braman ever asking for anything for himself.”

I just watched Rubio on the Senate floor saying he wanted Iran to recognize Israel’s existence before the U.S. cuts any nuclear deal with Iran. Does that have anything to do with the fact that he long discussed Israel with Braman and went there with his donor immediately after he got on to the national stage? I think it does, but our leading newspaper can’t even ask the question, about perhaps the most important foreign-policy issue of the coming election.

More whitewash, at MSNBC. Another piece on Braman that doesn’t mention Israel, and claims Braman wants nothing of Rubio.

“Norm Braman is a great man, a pillar of the South Florida community and someone who I’m personally close to. I’m very proud to be associated with him,” Rubio said in an interview early Saturday evening, after he walked up and down Greenville’s Main Street shaking hands with voters. He repeated past assertions that there’s no ethical conflicts in the relationship because Braman has never asked him for political favors.

Again, just days after he was elected to the Senate, Rubio was traveling to Israel to meet Braman there. Till our press even addresses the issue of the Israel lobby, people are going to form dark and conspiratorial views of the extent of its influence. And until it addresses the issue, some conspiratorial ideas will actually have merit. We need sunshine. Especially from Jewish writers, who understand the role of Zionism inside Jewish life.

And by the way, a piece in the Times today about Republican hopefuls adopting a “muscular foreign policy” at a South Carolina Freedom Summit was more frank about the Israel lobby’s presence in our politics. Nick Corasanti reported:

[Wisconsin Governor Scott] Walker, who does not have as much experience as some of his potential rivals on foreign policy, sought to demonstrate that he is working to address what could be viewed as his greatest weakness. Hours after he left the stage, he boarded a plane to Israel for what is being billed as a “listening tour,” which he has said includes a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. According to a schedule of his trip obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Walker will also tour the Western Wall in Jerusalem, meet with members of Parliament and the Israeli Defense Forces, and take a helicopter tour of Israel.

But aside from a quick mention during his remarks, Mr. Walker was unwilling to discuss the trip.

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TPP? Russia? ISIS? Syria? Where better to broaden his education than Israel! Better than a university. And all that money!

And this morning on Meet The Press, a story on Sheldon Adelson as GOP Kingmaker, co-investigated by UC Berkeley journalism students according to the intro, mentioned Israel exactly zero times.

Must not be relevant.

“We don’t learn that Braman is Jewish”

pw…Jew counting again.

Terribly sorry if this has already been reported, but it’s definitely troubling/gagworthy.

…”GOP 2016 contender John Bolton touts foreign policy expertise on Isis and Iran
John Bolton, ex-Bush administration ambassador to UN, warns of Isis infiltration into US and says Iran could lead ‘nuclear holocaust’ against Israel

A former ambassador to the United Nations may soon add his name to the list of candidates, citing a lack of experience among rivals on what many Republicans believe will be one of the defining issues of the next election: foreign policy.

John Bolton, who served in the administration of George W Bush, descended upon the South Carolina Freedom Summit on Saturday to test the waters for a 2016 presidential bid. His message: under Barack Obama, a terrorist attack is imminent.

“Whether that attack in Garland, Texas was legitimately an Isis attack, I don’t know. They’ve taken credit for it; it may just be bluster,” Bolton said in an interview with the Guardian. “But even if it’s not an Isis attack, Isis is coming.”…

…Most candidates have chosen rhetoric over proposals, pledging simply to bomb Isis into oblivion. On Saturday in Greenville, Florida senator Marco Rubio, considered relatively experienced in foreign policy matters, quoted Liam Neeson in the 2008 action movie Taken when he defined his message to terrorists as: “We will look for you, we will find you and we will kill you.”

Bolton called for a broader military campaign and questioned whether the US-led coalition is actually bombing Isis and training Syrian rebels. US-led air strikes against Isis began in Iraq on 8 August and Syria on 23 September, and have now run into the thousands.

Like other 2016 contenders, he also assailed the Obama administration’s nuclear accord with Iran, going so far as to say the Islamic Republic was “capable of carrying out a nuclear holocaust” against Israel.

Bolton pointed to public polling showing that most Americans oppose the Iran deal. In recent weeks, however, polling has found that a majority support the framework agreement announced last month and oppose action by Congress that would sabotage the deal.

Bolton has nonetheless been a constant critic of the negotiations. In March, he penned a controversial op-ed in the New York Times in which he called for bombing Iran before it got a nuclear weapon.

He has also adopted one of the central conservative arguments against Obama’s foreign policy – that the president lacks leadership ability and is anti-war. Asked if American voters, increasingly wary of military intervention after more than a decade of war, would want a return to a hawkish foreign policy, Bolton again blamed Obama for such public sentiment.

“If he doesn’t explain that defending ourselves at a distance there is better than defending ourselves here, then people don’t understand why we’re there,” he said. “They don’t understand why Americans are dying. They don’t understand why it’s necessary.”

So what would make Bolton stand out in a primary in which most candidates are drawing on the same themes?

“I think I’ve got the most real experience of foreign policy of any of them, so the real question is how they’re going to catch up with me,” he said.”…

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/10/john-bolton-2016-republican-foreign-policy-hillary-clinton

Never mind that his “foreign policy” was an abject failure that its millions of victims and the world are still paying for.

lol at NYT writing: [Braman] helped cover the cost of Mr. Rubio’s salary as an instructor at a Miami college.

Whose cost was that salary before, then? Did the college not pay Rubio?