Trump Shows his Contempt for the Military

Weather was no obstacle for the leaders of France and Germany for honoring the war dead.

Donald Trump avoided serving in the military during the Vietnam War using multiple deferments for "bone spurs' even as he went on to play on sports teams in college. It was the first of many actions demonstrating Trump's contempt for the members of the U.S. military despite disingenuous claims to the contrary.  Today is Veterans Day and the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, a war that was the result of uncontrolled nationalism and ultimately was supposed to end all wars.  As western leaders gather to remember the millions of fallen soldiers in that brutal and totally avoidable war, Trump stayed away citing "bad weather" even though other leaders found the weather to be no obstacle to their attendance.  Trump's pretense of honoring the military is even worse that that of most Republicans who are trigger happy and always too eager to send members of the military to their deaths - perhaps why a record number of veterans ran for office this year as Democrats. A column in the Washington Post looks at Trump ongoing contempt for the members of the military.  Here are excerpts:

It seems that soldiers who were captured aren’t the only ones that President Trump doesn’t like. He also apparently doesn’t care much for the ones who died for their country.

On Saturday afternoon, the president was scheduled to attend a ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, where 2,289 U.S. soldiers are buried — a small part of the 116,000 Americans who gave the last full measure of devotion during World War I. It was the sort of solemn occasion that U.S. presidents have considered an integral part of their duty at least since the Gettysburg Address. But Trump couldn’t be bothered.

The White House explained that bad weather grounded the helicopters that Trump and his entourage were planning to take. Yet somehow bad weather did not prevent French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau from attending outdoor ceremonies commemorating the end of World War I that afternoon. Somehow bad weather did not stop Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and retired general John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, from attending the very ceremony that Trump could not make.

Rather than make the hour-long drive (Aisne-Marne is only 55 miles from Paris), the low-energy president remained behind at the U.S. ambassador’s residence. It’s not as if he didn’t sacrifice anything, however. Odds are that his room didn’t have Fox News. So he was probably reduced to watching CNN all afternoon. If the New York dating scene was Trump’s personal Vietnam, this was his personal Verdun.

Trump is right that he and the Republican Congress have increased defense spending — it has gone from roughly $600 billion to $700 billion a year — but he’s wrong to blame Obama alone for the lower levels during his presidency. The budget-squeezing sequestration process was a bipartisan initiative designed to cut the deficit without tax increases. What Trump doesn’t understand is that showering money on the armed forces doesn’t mean that he respects or supports what they do.

Trump shows what he really thinks of the troops by using them as political props. He deployed 5,600 troops just before the midterm elections to guard against the supposed threat posed by a few thousand unarmed refugees hundreds of miles from the U.S. border. . . . . Conveniently enough, Trump and his friends at Fox essentially stopped speaking about the caravan once the votes were cast. But, as the New York Times reports, the troops are still in the field, without electricity or hot meals — or a mission. They will likely spend Thanksgiving away from their families.

Naturally, Trump will not bother to visit them, even though there is no risk in traveling to Texas. He still has not visited U.S. troops deployed to a war zone — although he has spent 72 days at Mar-a-Lago and 58 days at his Bedminster, N.J., golf club.

So much for Trump’s conceit that he is pro-military. It has about as much factual foundation as his claim not to know his newly appointed acting attorney general. He has no understanding of what soldiers do or the honor code by which they live. His idea of military service is marching in a parade — and he is peeved he couldn’t have one in Washington this Veterans Day. Through his words and deeds, the commander in chief shows his contempt for the men and women in uniform.

With many friends and neighbors in the military - and a son-in-law who was wounded in Afghanistan - I know first hand what members of the military do and live with.  Trump as no clue and no doubt sees these honorable individuals as "little people" who are simply beneath him.  Very, very disgusting - just like everything else about this foul and toxic individual.

P.S. The Atlantic has a series of poignant photos of WWI battlefields as they look today.  The images are here.

France Calls for No Trade Deals with On Countries outside Paris Climate Accord

Since the end of World War II, America has been one, if not the only, preeminent super power in the world.  Much of this hegemony was accomplished and maintained through international alliances such as NATO and trade treaties.  Now, the Trump/Pence regime is shredding the template that has kept America strong and seeking to destroy mostly beneficial trade treaties.  Indeed, Trump and his sinister and apparently equally ignorant Vice President seemingly want to take America back to 1920's - 1930's style isolationism (which helped set the stage for WWII) even though the world and global trade has changed radically in the intervening almost 100 years.  The mindset is just as delusional as pro-Brexit voters in the United Kingdom who dream of the long gone British Empire.  Today, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested what may become a new reality as America slinks back into isolationism: a unified Europe, Mexico, Canada, South America and most of Asia all joining in trade agreements that would truly isolate America.  A piece in The Independent looks at the possible picture of the future.  Here are article highlights:

Emmanuel Macron has announced France will no longer accept “commercial agreements” with countries that do not “respect” the Paris Climate Accord during a fiery speech at the United Nations General Assembly. 

The French president called for the upholding of trade rules that “guarantee fair competition on equal footing” during his Tuesday speech, following a Monday afternoon meeting with Donald Trump and the US president’s speech on Monday morning. Mr Macron appeared defiant towards Mr Trump, suggesting he’d no longer negotiate trade deals with the US after its withdrawal from the climate agreement last year. 

The US is now reportedly the only nation in the world which remains opposed to the Paris Agreement, after Mr Trump decided to pull out of the accord in 2017. 

Mr Macron also appeared to reject the US president’s “America First” policies, arguing that international superpowers should seek peaceful resolutions for global issues, from the Syrian Conflict to Iran’s nuclear programs. 

He also criticised the president’s decision to pull out of the Iran Nuclear deal, touting its success in preventing the country’s "nuclear military path”. 

“What will bring a real solution to the situation in Iran and what has already stabilised it? The law of the strongest? Pressure from only one side? No!“ he said. “We know that Iran was on a nuclear military path but what stopped it? The 2015 Vienna accord.” 

The speech deeply contrasted that of Mr Trump, who spoke on Monday about “America’s policy of principled realism,” while criticising components of the United Nations.

“We will not return to the Human Rights Council until real reform is enacted. We will also not provide any support to the International Criminal Court,“ he [Trump] said, adding that “the ICC has no authority. It violates all principles of justice and due process.”

“We will never surrender America’s sovereignty,” Mr Trump continued. “We reject the ideology of globalism. America is governed by Americans.“ 

[Trump] The president also announced the US would reduce its funding towards the UN peacekeeping budget to under 25 per cent. 

I'm sure that Trump supporters will sneer at France's position, but before they do so, they might want to reflect on the reality that France has a transportation/infrastructure far better than America's and a health care system that is the most efficient in the world which doesn't leave its citizens in bankruptcy when serious illness occurs.  

Macron Tears Down Trumpism

During an address to a joint session of Congress French President Emmanuel Macron demonstrated that he is everything that Donald Trump is not: young, handsome, well spoken, able to show empathy for others, and cares beyond simply himself.   Indeed, he looks and acts presidential while Trump comes across as crude, not overly bright trailer park trash with money.  I will confess that I love the French and that Paris is perhaps my favorite city in the world.  I also - unlike, I suspect far too many Americans - know that France is America's oldest ally and that but for the French fleet which blocked British reinforcements, the battle of Yorktown would have likely been lost by the American army under George Washington.  Likewise, many of the founding principles of America embraced by the Founding Fathers trace back across the Atlantic to French writers.  Thus, it was proper that Macron reminded Americans of everything being lost under the toxic Trump/Pence regime.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Macron's speech.  Here are highlights:

Before French President Emmanuel Macron delivered an address at a joint meeting of Congress on Wednesday, the headlines about his trip to Washington centered on his apparent “bromance” with President Trump.  

But on Wednesday, as his three-day visit drew to a close, Macron shifted the story dramatically. In his speech to American lawmakers, he offered a comprehensive rejection of the main tenets of Trumpism, excoriating “extreme nationalism” and protectionism, championing climate-change science and defending the international liberal order. “You can play with anger and fear for a time,” Macron said, alluding to the themes that fuel right-wing nationalist movements in the West, “but they do not construct anything.”

 

Macron went on, urging his American audience to look beyond borders and walls. “We can choose isolationism. But closing the door to the world will not stop the evolution of the world,” he said. And he bristled at the rise of autocrats and illiberal democrats, which include some leaders favored by Trump: “I don’t share fascination for new strong powers and the illusion of nationalism,” he said.

 

Macron also cast a skeptical eye at Trump's efforts to slap tariffs on imports from allies and undermine existing free-trade deals. To Macron, this bid to boost American manufacturing jobs at home — combined with Trump's dismissals of climate change as a “hoax” — was counterproductive and shortsighted.

“Some people think that securing current industries and their jobs is more urgent than transforming our economies to meet the challenge of global change,” he said. In the final analysis, he suggested, the impasse cannot last. “In the long run, we will have to face the same realities,” he said. “We’re just citizens of the same planet.”

There's no “Planet B,” Macron pointed out, echoing an earlier argument he made about there being no “Plan B” for the Iran nuclear deal that Trump wants to dismantle. Then he drew thunderous applause from Democrats with this confident declaration: “I am sure one day the United States will come back and join the Paris agreement.”

 

Macron also played the role of the proud transatlantic ally. He hailed the historic French-American friendship and the two countries' shared sacrifices from World War II to the current fight against Islamist militant groups in various parts of the world. And he predictably appealed to a love of liberty and the many other cultural connections between the two countries.

Macron also summoned legacies largely ignored by Trump. . . . . . “Human rights, the rights of minorities and shared liberty are the true answers to the disorder of the world,” Macron said to Congress. Meanwhile, across the street at the Supreme Court, the Trump administration pressed its case to impose blanket travel bans on certain Muslim-majority countries.

There are few things Washington officialdom loves to discuss more than the importance of American leadership in the world. Macron did not disappoint. He reminded Democrats and Republicans that the nuclear deal Congress approved in 2015 was worth defending, and that the alternatives — a confrontation that may lead to war with Iran — would “replicate past mistakes.”

 

He also told his audience of the importance of the world order that “you built,” pointing to the institutions and international norms developed after World War II.  . . . . “You are the one now who has to help preserve and reinvent it,” he added, calling on Washington to help build a new world order “based on a more effective, accountable, and results-oriented multilateralism.”

 

Macron “solidified his standing as leader of the West (to the extent there still is a West) by his call today before Congress for an updated liberal world order to meet regional, global challenges,” tweeted Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations and a doyen of the Washington policy establishment. “His problem is a lack of partners in Europe and here in U.S.”

 

“The most likely result is that the American president won’t pay attention to what Macron was trying to say — indeed, that he won’t even understand that he has been so openly challenged,” wrote Post columnist Anne Applebaum. “And that may have been the point, for Macron’s speech will be perfectly understood in France, in Europe, and even in the United States (at least outside the White House).”

Former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, an inveterate Atlanticist, echoed the sentiments of many in her milieu with a tweeted jab at Trump: “It has been too long since a President delivered a speech in Washington about the need to defend democracy and support international cooperation.”

Emmanuel Macron - New Leader of the Free World?

With Donald Trump alienating America's allies right and left and even South Korea saying it's more concerned with Trump's erratic and unhinged behavior than that of the leader of its next door neighbor, one can certainly make the case that America and its toxic president are no longer the leader of the free world.  The United Kingdom, like America through is Brexit vote, has seemingly likewise withdrawn itself from that possible tile.   As a consequence, some have said that mantle now rests with Angela Merkel of Germany.  As a piece in the Washington Post suggests, Emmanuel Macron of France may have his sights on the title.  With so many Americans utterly ignorant of history - most don't know that it was the French fleet that save George Washington's butt at the battle of Yorktown - don't know that France was once a very great power.  If you have doubts, visit Versailles sometime, and call to mind that Canada was once a French possession as was a large part of Africa and the American Mid-West.  But I digress.  Here are article highlights:

Emmanuel Macron is a master of persuasion. In his youth, he seduced his married high school drama teacher, the woman who is now his wife. In middle age — with no government experience — he cajoled a sitting president into giving him a coveted cabinet position. Then — with no support from any established political party — he dazzled a nation, becoming, at 39, the youngest-ever president of France, a country where tradition is a way of life.

Judging from the new president’s calendar, however, the dip in domestic popularity is of little concern, for his roving political eye seems to have identified a new conquest. Macron may be the president of France, but now he seems to be running for a different office altogether: the leader of the free world. Following the election of Donald Trump — who ran on promises of “America First” isolationism — commentators worldwide immediately began referring to German Chancellor Angela Merkel as the de facto defender of the liberal world order. With her famously stoic demeanor, Merkel appeared the natural replacement. Throughout her long career, she has advocated diplomacy and international law, and has defended an embattled European Union.

But in his first three months in office, Macron has dared to tread where Merkel hesitates to go. In keeping with his youthful image, he makes bold statements in defense of global causes such as climate change action, as evidenced in his Twitter campaign to “Make Our Planet Great Again.” And in the style of the “French Obama,” he hosts international celebrities in the Élysée for “conversations” on hot-button issues — including both Bono and Rhianna this week.
 [T]he major plot points of his young presidency have all featured him in the international spotlight, either attempting to charm or stand up to powerful world leaders, often those unpopular in France.

This is not to say that nothing has happened on the domestic level since his election in May. Macron, a relative political outsider even a year ago, ultimately succeed in carrying out an almost unthinkable overhaul of French political life. The new centrist party he founded, République En Marche (Republic on the Move), now has an absolute majority in Parliament.

[H]is principal ambition to date seems to be casting himself as a master negotiator in a new world where all roads somehow lead to Paris.

“To some extent, France is back again,” said Pierre Vimont, a former French ambassador to the United States and the E.U., in an interview. “You have France pushing forward its interest, but doing so in a way that makes it take a central position on the world stage, because France likes to lead and likes to be seen as leading.”

This defense of French interests has taken forms large and small, including a last-minute move to temporarily nationalize France’s largest shipyard on Thursday — to save French jobs from a potential Italian takeover. But so far, it has mostly been the world stage on which Macron has set his sights. Last week, for instance, he hosted Libya’s two rival leaders for talks in a chateau outside Paris. The mission was tentatively successful: the meeting led to a conditional cease-fire agreement between Fayez al-Sarraj, Libya’s U.N.-backed prime minister, and Khalifa Haftar, the military leader who controls much of eastern Libya. Likewise, Vimont said, Macron has positioned himself as a similar mediator between Israel and Palestine and even between the United States and Russia.

Macron has hosted — separately — Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Trump, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In each of these meetings, Macron has used his considerable charm to play both sides, even while blasting Putin for Russia’s state-owned media being “organs of propaganda.”  But nowhere was Macron’s ability to seduce more on display than in the case of Trump, whom he invited to Paris after the two had a tense first meeting in Brussels in May. For Dominique Moïsi, a French foreign policy expert at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne, a think tank with ties to the Macron campaign, there is potential danger in Macron’s having “put himself in the limelight.”

“At the same time, the devil is in the details,” Moïsi said. “By receiving these leading opposite forces in Paris, he’s taking a risk. What if he fails?”

Macron’s young presidency has not yet experienced a major domestic crisis or attack. Likewise, none of his major policy proposals have yet been implemented — including his controversial push to liberalize France’s highly regulated labor market. Those reforms are due to be introduced in Parliament this fall, and could inspire massive protests. . . . As Moïsi put it, “The hard times are yet to come.”

I wish him luck.  Meanwhile, the husband and will be back in Paris next year - a friend who is retiring is taking us with her and her husband.  She has left us to plan the details. :)

France's New President (Unlike Trump) Stands Up to Putin

I have always liked France and the French, perhaps because I am part French due to my grandmother's New Orleans French ancestry, my knowledge of French history and love of Paris, and knowledge that but for France and the French fleet, American forces would likely have been defeated at the battle of Yorktown (where we were yesterday for a wedding in a Revolutionary era B&B).  Now, France's newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron, has added to the list of reasons to admire France.  In his first meeting with Russian dictator, Vladimir Putin, Macron stood up to Putin and even challenged him over the anti-gay pogroms that are ongoing in Chechnya.  Donald Trump, in contrast, has more or less kissed Putin's ass and seemingly acted on Putin's script to damage U.S. - European relations.  A piece in Politico looks at Macron's impressive performance.  Here are highlights:

The official line on the first meeting between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin was that it was “frank” and “open” and covered Syria, Ukraine and a host of other topics — but the differences between the two leaders were plain to see.

The new French president struck a firm, at times defiant tone. There was even a flash of anger when the subject of election hacking was brought up. He said Russian state-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik “did not behave like press outlets, but behaved like agents of influence and propaganda” which spread “serious falsehoods.” “I will never give in to that,” he said while standing next to Putin.

There were less awkward moments. Speaking to journalists at the Versailles palace, the two leaders said they had agreed to restart talks on Ukraine in the “coming days and weeks” under the so-called Normandy format — referring to four-way consultations between Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany that have been paused.

“No essential topic can be addressed without dialogue with Russia,” Macron said during their joint news conference in the Gallery of Battlesk, a huge gilded hall covered in paintings depicting scenes of war. “It was a frank exchange, extremely direct … We share disagreements, but we also see how to construct a common action.”

While Putin was granted a statesman’s welcome in grand surroundings, at times he looked uncomfortable during his brief appearance with Macron in front of journalists.

The Russian leader, who had not been to France since 2015, offered brief answers to just four questions from some 200 journalists in the room, dismissing one about election meddling as something that “does not exist.”

The only time he went into anything approaching detail was to offer a defense of his decision to meet far-right leader Marine Le Pen during France’s presidential campaign — a meeting he said had been initiated by the National Front leader.

Macron, just back from a G7 meeting in Sicily, wasn’t so shy about speaking out. On Syria, he said “any use of chemical weapons” would prompt an “armed response,” and added that France would “remain vigilant” on human rights issues including abuses of gay people in Chechnya and the treatment of non-governmental organizations in Russia.

Macron’s team wanted Putin to feel more welcome than challenged. They used an exhibit on Peter the Great’s 1717 visit to Versailles as an excuse to invite Putin to France, a move that was both deliberate and designed to speak to Putin’s notions of his own importance.

Macron aides insisted on the need to re-establish a working relationship after a bad patch in Franco-Russia ties under his predecessor François Hollande.

“This is a new departure in our relations,” Russia’s ambassador to Paris, Alexandre Orlov, told the RIA Novosti agency. “It seems that between Macron and Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], there are many common points, and they should be able to understand each other well.”

France, unlike America at the moment, has a president who is intelligent, informed, and concerned with more that fanning his own insatiable ego.  Then, of course, there is the issue that unlike Trump, Macron was not put in office thanks to Russian electoral subterfuge and sabotage. 

France Avoids Making America's Mistake

French president-elect Emmanuel Macron

With most of the votes counted, right wing Neo-fascist French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has gone down to a nearly 2 to 1 defeat to centrist Emmanuel Macron who will be the youngest French leader since Napoleon Bonaparte.  Le Pen tried to excite the same emotions of hate and resentment that took Trump to the White House but French voters seemingly saw the dangerous the toxic brew Le Pen was peddling - in sharp contrast to aggrieved white voters in America, many of who will lose their health insurance coverage if the current hideous of Trumpcare were to pass. Hopefully, Trump's victory and the aftermath here in America proved cautionary to French voters and will do the same in Germany when it holds elections in September, 2017.  One can only hope that Macron can reinvigorate the French economy and help unify the European Union after the UK's foolish exit vote.  The Washington Post looks at the election results.  Here are highlights: 

The anti-E. U. French leader Marine Le Pen’s larger-than-expected defeat Sunday in her nation’s presidential election was a crushing reality check for the far-right forces who seek to overthrow Europe: Despite the victories for Brexit and Donald Trump, they are likely to be shut out of power for years.

Given one choice after another since Trump’s U.S. presidential victory, Western European voters have delivered mainstream candidates to office despite a post-November sense that an anti-immigrant populist wave was washing over the Western world. Far-right candidates in Austria, the Netherlands and France have faltered. The euroskeptic far-right party in Germany has collapsed in recent polls ahead of September elections. And an unforgiving election calendar now offers few routes into power for years.

The thwarted momentum comes despite clear evidence that views that would have been taboo to express just a few years ago are no longer too toxic to exclude politicians from coming a breath away from leadership. When Le Pen’s father reached a presidential runoff in 2002, his opponent refused even to debate with him, so unacceptable to the mainstream were his views. This time, many French citizens sat out the election altogether because they detested both Le Pen and Macron — even though the pro-European centrist Macron offered a vastly different platform from his opponent. Le Pen’s result, just above 34 percent with most of the vote counted, was still a historic high for her party.

French people have chosen the continuity candidate,” a visibly disappointed Le Pen said in a brief concession address. She said she would seek to rename her National Front party, a measure of the extent to which her defeat rattled supporterswho just weeks ago harbored hopes of capturing the Elysee Palace.  Instead, Le Pen’s numbers sank in the two weeks since she placed second in the first round of the French elections.

[T]he failure of the far-right to seize office comes in stark contrast to expectations in November that Trump’s ascendance in the United States would unleash a global wave of populist politicians. Le Pen was one of the first leaders around the world to congratulate Trump the night of his victory. Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders exulted the day after. And Trump advisers and top European far-right leaders conferred in the weeks after the U.S. election.

The subsequent elections have shown a clear trend in Western Europe: Voters are sick of the mainstream and fed up with their leaders. But they are still not ready to hand power to the far-right. The chaotic first months of the Trump presidency may actually have hurt Europe’s populists rather than helping them.

European leaders rushed to turn the page on a grim year for the bloc, embracing Macron’s victory as the first step in the rejuvenation of an embattled alliance against forces that would tear it apart. Many mainstream leaders feared political Armageddon if Le Pen had won. In Brussels, the seat of the E.U., cheers could be heard in the streets the moment the exit polls were released Sunday evening, as though a favorite soccer team clinched a match.

In Germany, meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany has collapsed in opinion polls in recent months following post-Trump heights. The party presided over a smaller but still telling defeat on Sunday, bringing up the rear in Sunday’s vote in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, with projections showing it winning less than 6 percent of vote.

Macron hopes to soften Germany’s exacting insistence on fiscal austerity as he imposes sweeping pro-business reforms inside his own country. If he succeeds, he may help disarm anti-E. U. voices across the continent. But if he fails to jump-start France’s economy — and Europe’s — he will fuel questions about whether the European Union is helping or hurting its citizens’ lives. 

I wish Macron lots of luck and success.  The far right needs to crawl back under the rocks from whence it emerged.  

Is Putin Trying To Reprise a Stolen Election in France?

Putin and Le Pen - both enemies of democracy

For the record, I continue to believe that Russian dictator - that is, after all, what he is - Vladimir Putin helped steal the 2016 presidential election for Donald Trump and that it is very likely that the Trump campaign cooperated with that effort.  Now, the same effort seems to be taking place in France where on the eve of the presidential run off election a massive dump of hacked documents has taken place with the apparent goal of damaging Emmanuel Macron and throwing the election to neo-fascist Marine Le Pen.  Le Pen has very open ties to Putin and her political party has even received funding from Putin's government and henchmen.  One would hope that French voters will be smarter than many angry white voters were and will see the hacking and document dump for what it is and run screaming away from La Pen.  If not, expect Putin to try to steal Germany's election next.  The irony in all of this is that the would be authoritarian rulers claim that are out to protect traditional values and the common citizen, yet as the House GOP's Trumpcare bill reveals, that is the furthest thing from the truth.  The House GOP's bill basically tells millions to just get sick and die and do the wealthy and the oligarchs a favor by doing so.  The New York Times looks at what can only be a Russian effort to undermine and destroy France's democracy.  Here are excerpts (note that fake documents were mixed in with real ones to dupe voters and lazy journalists):

PARIS — On the eve of the most consequential French presidential election in decades, the staff of the centrist candidate Emmanuel Macron said late Friday that the campaign had been targeted by a “massive and coordinated” hacking operation, one with the potential to destabilize the nation’s democracy before voters go to the polls on Sunday.

The digital attack, which involved a dump of campaign documents including emails and accounting records, emerged hours before a legal prohibition on campaign communications went into effect. While the leak may be of little consequence, the timing makes it extremely difficult for Mr. Macron to mitigate any damaging fallout before the runoff election, in which he faces the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, who has pledged to pull France out of the euro and hold a referendum to leave the European Union.

The hacking immediately evoked comparisons to last year’s presidential election in the United States, during which American intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, ordered an “influence campaign” to benefit the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump.

Groups linked to Russia, that are also believed to have been involved in the hacking related to the 2016 United States presidential campaign, have previously been accused of trying to breach the Macron organization. Security experts tracking the activity of suspected Russian hackers say they believe those same groups were involved in this latest attack.

In a statement, the Macron campaign said the hackers had mixed fake documents along with authentic ones, “to sow doubt and misinformation.”

The Macron campaign said the documents leaked Friday were stolen several weeks ago after the personal and professional emails of staff members at En Marche, his political movement, were hacked.

It was not the first reported hacking attempt of Mr. Macron’s campaign. In April, a report by the cybersecurity firm Trend Micro said there was evidence that the campaign was targeted in March by what appeared to be the same Russian operatives who were responsible for hacks of Democratic campaign officials before last year’s American presidential election. Mr. Macron’s campaign said the attack was unsuccessful.

Vitali Kremez, the director of research at Flashpoint, a business risk intelligence company in New York, said he suspected the involvement of a Russian-linked espionage operation known as APT28. “The key goals and objectives of the campaign appear to be to undermine Macron’s presidential candidacy and cast doubt on the democratic electoral process in general,” he said.

“If indeed driven by Moscow, this leak appears to be a significant escalation over the previous Russian operations aimed at the U.S. presidential election, expanding the approach and scope of effort from simple espionage efforts towards more direct attempts to sway the outcome,” Mr. Kremez added.

Security researchers who have been tracking APT28, also known as Fancy Bear, say it has been moving aggressively against NATO members and a variety of Western targets using various hacking tools, including so-called spear-phishing attacks, but also through the exploitation of vulnerabilities in technologies that allow hackers to invade their targets undetected by security software.

The National Commission for Control of the Electoral Campaign, a regulatory body, said it was contacted by the Macron campaign on Friday night. The commission, which planned to meet on Saturday about the hacking, urged the news media to be cautious in its reporting.

“It therefore asks the media, and in particular their websites, not to report on the content of these data, recalling that the dissemination of false information is liable to fall within the scope of the law — in particular criminal law,” the commission said.

The Macron campaign appealed to journalists to not do the hackers’ bidding by widely publicizing the contents of the emails.

Given what is known about Russia's involvement and Putin's goals of an ascendant Russia at the expense of Europe and America, I cannot fathom why anyone sane would vote for someone favored by Putin.  

On a different note, criminal hacking is not only occurring in the political realm.  More and more businesses and law firms are targets with the goal being to steal trade secrets and steal monies in trust accounts.  Nationwide, millions of dollars have been stolen from law firm trust accounts through hacked e-mails and altered wire instructions.