Trumpster Diving

  • National Security Adviser John Bolton is out. The self-termed “Americanist” and globalism cynic was Trump’s inner circle skeptic—from objecting to the chatting up of Kim Jong-un to the inviting of the Taliban to Camp David.  Mainly it’s the usual hard-line, regime-change hawks who are upset. Unless, of course, it’s those insiders who fear that this frees up Trump, a narcissistic, instinctive isolationist, to advise himself. Or maybe those who discern that having four NSAs in less than three years can’t possibly be a positive. And there are those who wondered why the hell Trump hired him in the first place; his warmongering views were as much a public record as his pornstache. But there are those who think the National Security Council must surely be less dysfunctional now. Surely. As for Bolton, his book may be out before Sarah Huckabee Sanders’.
  • It’s no secret that President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have a synergistic political bromance going. But Netanyahu won’t be kissing up to Trump for dumping John Bolton, a strong, anti-Iran ally.
  • “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, (Fed Chair) Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” Yes, that was the president, and, no, you can’t make this up.
  • Intemperate, narcissistic, unilateral decisions have consequences. To wit: Trump pulling out of the imperfect, multi-nation Iran-nuclear deal was perfectly counterproductive. The Iranian economy was devastated by accompanying sanctions, and the Iranians have been trying to find responsive leverage. Imperiling oil supplies via its Houthi rebel surrogates is obviously a strategic response.

That’s what was behind the drone attack by Yemeni Houthis on Saudi Arabian oil sites, including the world’s largest oil processing facility. The impact is global. America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserves are back in the news cycle. It’s what happens when a “master negotiator” unilaterally pulls out of a deal that has made matters worse. It’s what happens when the negotiator is playing solitaire—not poker.

  • Speaking of deals, it’s hard to imagine China agreeing to anything significant right now on trade. The incoherence that passes for Trump Administration policy is one disincentive; the other is that any deal would be awash in re-election—not reciprocity—priorities. And if a deal were cut, why would the Chinese trust him to honor it past Election Day?
  • No, we’ve never seen a president this dangerously and embarrassingly incompetent. But while Trump’s media-demonizing “enemy of the people” rhetoric and “fake news” rationales are authoritarian boxes checked, there is precedent for anti-media bias and targeting emanating from a presidential Administration. Recall the Nixon version. And his vice president, Spiro Agnew, was no better. In fact, Agnew once suggested that certain members of the news media—commentators on television, specifically—be scrutinized by “government personnel” to discover what “types” they were and to determine whether they should be holding the jobs they were in. Yes, we dodged that bullet, but this low-caliber president, who would dearly love to manipulate the news like he did with New York tabloids back in the day, still hasn’t been dodged yet.
  • “Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.” That was vintage Donald Trump, of course. The obviously begged question: What would this Trump White House, like, look like if its occupant were, like, not stable and smart?
  • “Certainly wide but perhaps much thinner and much more fragile than people realize.” That was the Trump-popularity take of Mark Sanford, the fiscal hawk and former GOP congressman and governor from South Carolina, who plans to challenge the incumbent with a primary bid.
  • As we’ve been seeing—from Washington to Ireland–the emoluments clause as it pertains to Trump-brand properties won’t go away. Alas, the emoluments clause doesn’t deal directly with that other Trump-brand issue. America has now been rebranded as arrogant, unilateral and unreliable.
  • While southern border issues—from humanitarian to security to Wall-funding–remain volatile constants in the news cycle, attention should not be diverted from the need for an enlightened self-interest “Marshall Plan” for Central America. It would be an “investment” for America to prevent, most notably, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador from morphing into failed, refugee-producing states. Honduras, the “murder capital of the world,” is virtually there. Speaking of, finally appointing an ambassador to Honduras would help—literally and symbolically.

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