Where are we going with this Trump presidency?
This past week, in Helsinki, an American president threw his country’s intelligence agencies (F.B.I., C.I.A., N.S.A.), our treaty allies (N.A.T.O), and the European Economic Union under the bus while simultaneously genuflecting to President Putin of Russia.
That is correct: The elected leader of the world’s largest economy, the Commander-in-Chief of the world’s strongest military, and the representative of the world’s longest lasting democracy…a country once respected by all…groveled before the ex-KGB operative/now kleptocratic dictator of an enemy nation.
In previous weeks, President Trump: (1) legitimized the dictatorship of North Korea by meeting with that country’s murderous leader, shaking his hand, and announced (without merit) that North Korea was de-nuclearizing; (2) initiated trade wars with America’s biggest trading partners, against the advice of virtually all economists and politicians; and, (3) cruelly separated young children from parents trying to immigrate to the United States, and then lost track of the children.
Meanwhile, our President continues his habit of lying to the public, inventing his own fantasy narrative of the world, and aggressively bashing news media which put out factual information needed by the American public to assess what in the Hell is going on in this country.
In the couple of days since the Helsinki fiasco, the President has made numerous attempts to walk-back his public statement (taking Putin’s word over that of our intelligence agencies), walking that walk-back back, then reversing himself again, then blaming Obama for everything, and then claiming that he dressed down Putin privately…but still admires him and is proud of their personal relationship.
(In fact, during the past week, Trump indicated that he intends to invite President Putin to the White House for a follow-up visit.)
In related news, the “fake news” “witch hunt” that Trump calls the Mueller investigation of the 2016 election moved ahead this past week, with the announcement of the charges being brought against 12 Russian intelligence agents who worked to undermine the electoral process here in America. There is no doubt anymore that this occurred (note: even the Republican leadership in Congress agrees) and that a primary Russian aim was to discredit Hillary Clinton and help elect Donald Trump.
This week, it was revealed that a female Russian agent, Maria Butina, infiltrated the National Rifle Association (the N.R.A.) where she worked to influence the Republican Party.
The lady spy has been arrested and charged with a number of felonies, among which is funneling Russian money through the NRA to the Trump campaign for President. Butina’s arrest is separate from Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation…but I’m sure it soon will be. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.
The President’s position on all of the Russia-gate stuff remains that “it never happened”, and that the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have their facts all wrong. But, “even it it did happen”, he asserts that he and his election team and relatives didn’t collude with the Russians. So, Donald Trump says that the matter should be dropped.
The biggest problem with Trump’s behavior is that he consistently acts like a guilty person, first with his denials in face of the facts, and then with his actions, (while a candidate and later as President) relative to the Russians and their leader Vladimir Putin.
For the past three years, Donald Trump has literally tripped over himself lauding, making excuses for, and enabling President Putin to execute his country’s foreign policy objectives (which any political scientist will tell you are not consistent with America’s). And, this week, he sided with Putin, who denied that the Russians meddled with the 2016 elections.
Our President acts exactly like a person who owes a large debt of gratitude to somebody. The Russian intelligence agency term is “kompromat“, i.e. the target has been compromised.
A most peculiar aspect of this story is the abetting of this questionable behavior by the Republican Party. These are the guys who wear the American flag lapel pins, the “law and order” folks, the “moral majority”, the party that rooted out the “Commies” in the 50’s, the force behind Reagan’s “tear down that wall!” speech, etc. Protecting America from enemies foreign and domestic is what they’re supposed to be all about. And, yet…
the Republican Party has spent the past two years trying to undermine the investigation into how a foreign power manipulated the American political process in 2016.
One would think that the sacred electoral process, the one that elects Republicans to political office, would be of great interest to these folks, and that they would want to get to the bottom of this matter so that it would never happen again.
(One would think that, because the right of Americans to freely vote in legitimate elections for the candidates of their choice is…what makes our nation a DEMOCRACY.)
But, that is not what has been going on. Just the opposite, in fact. Republican Party operatives, elected Republican spearthrowers, and Republican-oriented news media have conspired to besmirch American intelligence agencies (F.B.I., C.I.A.) and the courts, with the obvious intent to shut down the 2016 election investigation.
Again, a reasonable person would interpret this behavior to be self-serving, in other words the GOP seems to be trying to hide something improper that served them well in the 2016 elections.
Kompromat.
Today, the GOP leadership shot down funding for increased election security against hacking, giving rise to the speculation that they’re OK with rigged elections as long as Republican candidates get helped. “Are you listening, President Putin?”
Kompromat.
(Which reminds me: On July 16, 2016, then-candidate for President, Donald Trump, made this public statement at one of his rallies, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.” As it turns out, that same day, the Russians — whether they had tuned in or not — made their first effort to break into the servers used by Mrs. Clinton’s personal office, according to a sweeping 29-page indictment unsealed Friday by the special counsel’s office that charged 12 Russians with election hacking.
Trump asked for help…and he got it. Is that a coincidence?)
Kompromat.
So, now we must ask, what does the once-proud Republican Party, the party of Abraham Lincoln, stand for?
In the past couple of years, we’ve come to realize that: (a) the GOP was adamantly opposed to unbalanced budgets only when Democrats controlled the budget…
…(b) that the Federal Deficit was a horrible thing when manipulated by Democrats, but, when the GOP took control, borrowing trillions of dollars to pay for huge tax breaks for the richest 1 percent of Americans was a brilliant idea…
…and, (c) the Washington D.C. “swamp” was a terrible thing, but, once in power, the Republican Trump administration filled virtually every Cabinet and top-level regulatory position with industry shills; i.e. the “swamp” got swampier.
We’ve also come to understand that the GOP: (1) opposes immigration, the process whereby their own families came to embrace the American Dream; (2) opposes religions other than Christian; (3) opposes all efforts to restrict the ability of Americans of all ages to possess military-grade assault rifles (i.e. the ones that have been used in so many massacres of American children on American soil); (4) opposes health care for the poor; and, (5) opposes respectful treatment of minorities by community police.
If you are White, Christian, own lots of guns, and don’t give a crap about the less fortunate among us, then the GOP is your ticket.
No doubt about it: Abraham Lincoln would disown this version of the GOP.
And, now it appears that the GOP is comfortable with manipulation of the American electoral process so that GOP-friendly candidates get elected…even if the majority of voters don’t want that. First, they weaponized “gerrymandering”. Then, they passed “Voter I.D. laws” and elaborate schemes to minimize minority voting. Now, they’ve got Russian agents helping them elect bible-toting, W.A.S.P. candidates. Can we still call this a democracy?
Personally, Donald Trump’s only guiding principles seem to be to obliterate anything President Obama accomplished, reverse decades of American leadership in world trade, abolish alliances with America’s traditional friends and supporters, insult “non-white” nations and their peoples, and ingratiate himself with the world’s most ruthless dictators.
When his ideas don’t bear fruit, he falls back on his tried-and-true excuses: (1) Obama fucked it up; (2) it’s the Democrats’ fault; and, (3) what about Hillary’s e-mails?
Or, he just floats another conspiracy theory for his political base to lap up.
This is where we stand, a few months prior to the mid-term National elections: we have an unstable, out-of-his-depth President doing stupid, destructive things on a global scale, and a political party that is enabling him and aiding our enemies to undermine our electoral process.
I hope voters realize what is going on, because this is no way to “Make America Great Again”.
P.S. In another sign that the Trump/G.O.P. locomotive has careened off the tracks, yesterday it was announced that Midwest farmers would be getting $12 BILLION in emergency aid from the Department of Agriculture to counter lost sales of soybeans, sorghum, dairy, and pork.
The unvarnished truth is that this action is an unbudgeted (i.e. more borrowing) taxpayer-funded bailout of American farmers who are casualties of President Trump’s trade wars.
Not surprisingly, countries which were targeted with tariffs by Trump have responded by levying their own tariffs on American exports like soybeans, sorghum, dairy and pork. (This scenario was predicted by all economists, when they warned the President this past Spring against invoking tariffs to boost our economy.)
Wasn’t Donald Trump the guy who boasted several months ago that “Trade wars are easy to win!”?
Well, I’m not sure anyone would agree if taxpayers have to foot the bill for such “wins”.
(It is ironical that Trump is going down this path. He’s the guy who invested heavily in New Jersey casinos when the experts told him it was foolish.
He ended up losing his ass and declaring bankruptcy…
His creditors took huge hits, and Trump got an enormous corporate write-off (for his losses) in the form of Federal income tax credit for ten years. In essence, the U.S. government bailed-out his company. Fast forward twenty years: he’s again doing something stupid (trade wars), and he’s proposing to clean up his mess with taxpayer dollars.)
How much more of this “winning” can this Nation take before it bankrupts us? Voters might weigh-in on this in November…
Not content with this cavalcade of July embarrassments, President Trump got into a nasty tweetstorm with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani the other day. When the Iranian leader chafed at American economic threats to his Nation, and warned Trump to cool it, Cadet Bone Spurs responded with an angry, nuclear-tinged zinger, in CAPS, via his ever-present cell phone.
Just what the American public wants…a war with Iran! What is this jackass thinking? And, what would that accomplish?
Sounds like we need ANOTHER summit meeting.
Please, someone… tell me this is a dream!