8/6/17: Experts are more and more concerned by the president’s ludicrous understanding of foreign policy. Max Boot, a lifelong conservative, tells Robin Wright, a reporter for The New Yorker: “He seems as clueless today as he was on January 20.”
And that was stunningly clueless.
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“It’s like Trump is captain of the Titanic, but he’s actually aiming for the iceberg—and we’re all in danger of going down when the vessel hits.”
Former C.I.A. Director and four-star Air Force
General Michael Hayden
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“Trump has an appalling ignorance of the current world, of history, of previous American engagement, of what former presidents thought and did,” Geoffrey Kemp says. He worked in the Ford and Reagan administrations.
“The president has little understanding of the context and even less interest in hearing the people who want to deliver it,” Michael Hayden, former C.I.A. director tells Wright. “He’s impatient, decision-oriented, and prone to action. It’s all about the present tense. When he asks, ‘What the hell’s going on in Iraq?’ people around him have learned not to say, ‘Well, in 632…’”
He doesn’t want to listen. He’s got
better things to do.
“American leadership in the world – how do I phrase this, it’s so obvious, but
apparently not to him – is critical to our success, and it depends eighty per
cent on the credibility of the president’s word,” John McLaughlin tells Wright.
McLaughlin worked at the C.I.A. under seven presidents, from Richard Nixon to
George W. Bush, and ended up as the agency’s acting director.
Eliot A. Cohen, who worked for Bush 43, puts it bluntly:
Trump is completely
irredeemable. He has a feral instinct for self-survival, but he’s
unteachable. The ban on Muslims coming into the country and building a wall,
and having the Mexicans pay for it, that was all you needed to know about this
guy on foreign affairs. This is a man who is idiotic and bigoted and
ignorant of the law.
Former C.I.A. director Hayden gets the
last word. “It’s like Trump is captain of the Titanic, but he’s
actually aiming for the iceberg—and we’re all in danger of going down when the
vessel hits. Today, Hayden warns, “the most disruptive force in the world… is
the United States of America.”
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8/7/17: Trump must be feeling good. Day 200 of his presidency kicks off with an early start. He’s out of the White House, “that dump,” as he calls it. He has an imaginary friend with the Boy Scouts who called him to say his speech to the boys was the best speech ever. Everyone loves him, including Ivana, Marla, and Melania. Also Madonna. And Vice President Jesus! VP Jesus is definitely not planning, just in case Trump has to seek asylum in Russia, to run in 2020.
At 5:58 a.m. President Trump posts his first tweet for the day: “The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before (despite some phony Fake News polling). Look at rallies in Penn, Iowa, Ohio.......”
The actual polls are grim. GOP leaders know it. RealClearPolitics this morning shows Trump with an average “favorable rating of 38.7 % across ten polls. His unfavorable rating stands at 56.2 %.
Is
it possible, President Trump believes his base is growing because he’s counting
Russians?
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