From his unscripted comments and tweets, there always seems
to be a little 2016 Candidate Trump fighting to get out of President Trump but
never quite succeeding . . .
President Donald Trump’s
cancellation of his planned meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at
the Buenos Aires G20 is another sign of the now almost certain demise of his
declared “America First” agenda – and perhaps of his presidency. Supposedly
decided in response to a Ukraine-Russia naval incident in the Kerch Strait,
dumping the meeting is universally and correctly seen as a response to the guilty plea of his
former lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, to lying to Congress
(notice that James Clapper isn’t forced to plead
to his perjury before the Senate) and Cohen’s disclosure of
Trump’s fruitless business dealings in Russia.
Keep in mind that this
comes at a time when grand inquisitor Robert Mueller is on thin ice – or would
be, if Trump and his team had a clue. Consider: in just the past few days
Jerome Corsi, Roger Stone, and belatedly perhaps even Paul Manafort have
delivered what amounts to a case against Mueller’s underlings, including
subornation of testimony they knew to be false – a felony punishable by five years in the slammer (18
US Code § 1622 – Subornation of perjury). Is Trump or any of his lawyers
thinking of having the victims swear out a complaint and instructing the
Justice Department actually to prosecute these miscreants? No,
of course not, even though at least Corsi appears
to be willing.
Likewise Trump threatens to
declassify “a wide swath of ‘devastating’ documents related to the Mueller
probe, which he had initially planned to do in
September before changing his mind” on the beseeching of
British Prime Minister Theresa May. Britain’s worst prime minister ever is
desperate to hide the fact that at its root there’s nothing Russian about “Russiagate”
but there’s lots and lots of British MI6, GCHQ, and other Five Eyes
skullduggery aimed at subverting the 2016 US election and
preventing any possible rapprochement between Washington and Moscow. With
respect to both goals this massive PSYOP and political warfare
campaign by the US-UK Deep State has been a smashing success.
Trump has the goods on them
but just sits on his hands and threatens. (He should heed that great
philosopher Tuco from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: “When you have to shoot, shoot – don’t talk.”)
For those patiently waiting for Trump’s “4D chess” game to unleash QAon’s
“Storm,” here’s a news flash: the cavalry is not coming to the rescue. The
following are just a few names that will never be brought to
justice: Rod Rosenstein, Peter Strzok, Bruce Ohr, Andrew McCabe, James Comey,
Lisa Page, Andrew Weissmann, Stefan Halper, Christopher Steele, Joseph Mifsud,
Richard Dearlove, Andrew Wood, Susan Rice, Loretta Lynch, Cheryl Mills, Huma
Abedin, Samantha Power, Sally Yates, Jeannie Rhee, Eric Holder, James Clapper,
John Brennan, and Barack Hussein Obama. Oh, and Hillary Clinton of course
(while the whistleblower on her corrupt
activities gets raided by the FBI).
These august personages are
not subject to the laws binding on
ordinary mortals like thee and me. These scoundrels will skate.
All of them. That’s why a smug, world-class criminal like Brennan can mock Trump’s
complaints as similar to how “corrupt authoritarian leaders abroad behaved
before they were deposed.” He already anticipates dancing on Trump’s (probably
figurative) grave.
Back to the Cohen plea,
it’s entirely likely it was timed to have precisely the result of scuttling the
Trump-Putin meeting. There can be no better illustration of the weakness of
Trump's position than his inability to engage in even a semblance of
statesmanship with respect to the leader of the one power on the planet with
which the US absolutely must have some minimal working relationship.
With the Democrats set to take over in the
House of Representatives in just over a month, we'll soon
see intensified investigations
coordinated with Mueller to find any possible pretext for
impeachment in Trump’s business or private life. It’s conventional wisdom that
even if the Democrat-controlled House can find something to support articles of
impeachment the GOP-held Senate will be Trump’s firewall. Bunk. Democrats
rallied around their president Bill Clinton but it was Republicans who threw
Richard Nixon to the wolves. Are there a dozen or so Republican Senators who
would be ready to dump Trump and install Mike Pence in the Oval Office? You
betcha. Start with Mitt Romney.
As the noose around Trump’s neck continues
to tighten, his response will be to keep on carping about how unfair
it all is, that there was no collusion with Russia, that it’s a “total witch hunt” that should be
ended. All true, all meaningless. He has the weapons to fight back
but lacks the knowledge or personnel to use them. So he complains. He tweets.
Meanwhile, on substance he's jumping up and down like a monkey on a string.
Which leaves us
asking: Why?
One of the burdens carried
by those of us Deplorables who early in 2016 declared our support for
the then-improbable candidacy of Donald Trump has been the taunts of those who
“knew better.” Trump was a fraud, they said, “just a BS-ing con man who would say
anything to get elected.” He was a stalking horse to help usher in
President Hillary (what other Republican could she possibly beat?). He was
crude, impulsive, irritable, egotistical, dyslexic, and incapable of and
uninterested in learning anything he doesn’t already know. He was a flimflam
artist who had cheated everyone he’d ever done business with or been married to
and would abuse his lumpen Murican political supporters in Flyover
Country accordingly. He was just another globalist neocon flunky of the
Israelis, the Saudis, and the Deep State who was only mouthing populist
rhetoric to get elected. He was a shyster on the make whose only goal was to
enhance his “brand” to get even richer. He was a huckster with big assets in
Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, and other nasty, nasty places, who just wanted to
make a killing on his investments. And so on …
Those of us who supported
Trump (and who still struggle to support him) point to his repeated use of
America First and national interest language even when it was politically
counterproductive and only served to subject him to vilification by Democrats
and establishment Republicans alike. Ditto his repeated appeals for better
relations with Russia, even at the cost of being accused of treason by the same
antagonists and their media shills. Ditto the claim from a hostile source like
Bob Woodward that behind doors Trump repeatedly tries to do the right thing,
like get the US out of Afghanistan and Syria, but then is overruled by “experts” who are his
nominal subordinates. Ditto his seeming “art of the deal”
transformation of his bluster and threat competition with “Little Rocket Man”
into the best chance for peace on the Korean peninsula in seven decades. From
his unscripted comments and tweets, there always seems to be a little 2016
Candidate Trump fighting to get out of President Trump but never quite
succeeding . . .
But how then to explain
his terrible, horrible, no good, very
bad national security team? His beeline to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and
NATO headquarters in his maiden foreign policy trip to reaffirm mindless
hostility to Iran and America’s suicide pact with useless so-called “allies” in
Europe? His authorization of lethal weapons to Ukraine? His two cruise missile
strikes on Syria on transparently bogus claims of chemical weapons use? His
ever-tightening of sanctions on Russia and nonstop expansion of NATO? His
continued naval provocations against China?
To characterize as “low”
expectations of any Trump-Putin sidebar meeting that might have happened at the
G20 is putting it extremely mildly. (Who knows, maybe they’ll still manage to steal a few sweet moments for
a quick tête-à-tête, like a secret tryst of illicit lovers.
Maybe Strzok and Page can provide some pointers.) Even laying aside the endless
navel-gazing about what President Trump really wants, and why
his administration’s foreign policy bears almost no resemblance to his 2016
America First platform, it’s pretty clear that in practice the US course will
remain essentially a continuation of the failed policies of the past three
decades: a futile attempt to maintain US global hegemony indefinitely at any
cost. That can have only one hideous outcome.
With regard to Russia, the
Kerch Strait incident will serve as another pretext for sanctions that will
soon be added with the predictability that night follows day. The ongoing trade
war with China (on purely economic grounds not
wrong in itself) serves as a backdrop for continued dragon-baiting
in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait, and Xinjiang, all places
where the US has no actual interests. Even Trump’s minimal potential as a wrecking ball to disrupt the
dysfunctional commitments he inherited doesn’t seem to be
working out. The Swamp-critters to whom he’s entrusted his administration dance
along their merry way as though Mitt Romney or
¡Jeb! Bush were
president, with little or no interference from their nominal boss.
On top of hastening the bankruptcy of the US,
the danger of war with Russia, or China, or both will continue to increase.
Neither Russian President Putin nor Chinese President Xi Jinping can still have
any illusions about that and are planning accordingly. No one knows exactly
when or where we will reach the point of no return.
Russian and Chinese
officials have warned the US about their preparedness for war in so many
words. No one in Washington is listening, except to the extent that
the new report of a Congressionally mandated commission has concluded that
despite spending on our military ten times what Russia does
and three times China’s outlays, we still might lose a war to either
of those powers.
So what do the
Swamp-critters draw from that? We need to spend even more! And
Trump will accommodate them.
The one bright spot so far
has been on the Korean peninsula – for which Trump deserves great credit,
though his minions are
working overtime to avert the horrid prospect that peace might break out and
we’d no longer have an excuse to keep
troops in South Korea. On everything else, even where developments
favor disengagement from involvements not conducive to American interests,
Trump’s administration insists on digging back in.
For example, France’s
“Little Macro” wants a European army. It’s a ridiculous pipe dream, especially
since Europe faces no external threat except migration, against which a
conventional force is mostly useless. But Trump should be thrilled to take him
up on the offer and turn European security over to Europeans. Instead he’s trying to sink the
idea.
Likewise, in the Syrian
conflict it’s clear that with Russian and Iranian help President Bashar
al-Assad’s government has beaten the jihadists sicced on that unfortunate land
by the US and our so-called allies, but Washington won’t admit it and still
hopes to leverage Assad’s departure. Why, because of ISIS, which Trump said was
the sole reason we have thousands of US troops (illegally) in that country? No,
but because of the need to oppose Iran and impose regime change in Tehran, as
well as denying Moscow a “win.”
Iran (an Israeli obsession
having no bearing on US security) is also the reason Trump declined to take the exit ramp the Khashoggi
murder offered from our unnecessary commitment to the
despicable Wahhabist regime in Riyadh. Instead he has doubled down on US
support for Mohammed bin Salman while absurd plans for an “Arab NATO” proceed, as
though one NATO weren’t already bad enough.
None of this is America First.
In a sane policymaking world, Trump should be looking to cut a
spheres of influence deal with Putin (and with Xi and maybe with India’s
Narendra Modi). Maybe that’s what Trump really wants, maybe it
isn’t. Or maybe someone just gave him The Talk: “Do what you’re told, Mr.
President, or you and maybe your kid will end up like Jack Kennedy.”
In the final analysis, it
doesn’t seem to matter much what Trump wants. It would be only a small
exaggeration to say that with respect to foreign and security policy Trump is
now a mere figurehead of the permanent state. Even if Trump and Putin do happen to
meet again, what can the latter expect the former to say that would
make any difference?
As a signal of the
approaching end of the short-lived hope of America First, cancellation of
Trump-Putin is the penultimate act but not yet the final one. The fat lady’s aria will
be when Julian Assange is dragged to
Washington in chains, like some barbarian chieftain paraded in a
Roman triumph.
Ultimately, as Anne Coulter writes (with
respect to the Mexican border crisis, where Trump is at least doing slightly
better than in foreign affairs but not by much), Trump might “only be remembered
as a small cartoon figure who briefly inflamed and amused the rabble.” If
so, his failure will
have frittered away the only peaceful chance to
avert the looming death of our nation at
the hands of the Cultural Marxist duopoly
as well as to turn aside from the real prospect of a world war –
one from which America cannot emerge undamaged as we did from the first two.
P.S. I would be genuinely
thrilled to be wrong about all of the foregoing.