2/23/17: Iraqi forces continue their advance to wrest
Mosul from ISIS. In the process they have already lost 5,000 killed and
wounded. This is the plan – to let Iraqis fight their own battles. It was
implemented when Mr. Obama was still in office and Trump referred to as “a
total disaster” during his run for president. The U.S. lost 4,539 men and women
fighting in Iraq during the Bush years.
2/24/17: In a speech to CPAC,
Trump attacks the free press and claims media enemies won’t credit him even
if he receives a standing ovation.
“And I want you all to know we are
fighting the fake news. It’s fake. Phony. Fake. A few days ago, I called the fake
news the enemy of the people, and they are. They are the enemy of the
people.”
The problem is that Trump considers any
bad news or criticism related to his policies or actions to be “fake news” and
believes only what he gleans from watching Fox & Friends. (See: 3/5/17.)
___
2/25/17: Trump tweets: “The media has not reported that the National Debt in
my first month went down by $12 billion vs. a $200 billion increase in Obama
first mo.”
Oh, those terrible people
who write newspapers and talk on radio and TV!
Then again, you need to
be suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s to ignore the fact that the U.S.
economy was tanking in January 2009, when Mr. Obama took over. We do know
President Trump suffers from delusions, as when he insists that he “inherited a
mess” when he took office.
Did you know the economy
added jobs 76 months in succession before Trump took a seat in the Oval
Office?
___
2/26/17: Philip Bilden, Trump’s pick for
Secretary of the Navy, withdraws due to
conflict-of-interest issues. Bilden’s “qualifications” for the post include a
stint in the U.S. Army Reserves and twenty-five years’ work with a “global private equity investment management firm.”
FUN FACT: The populist president displays an affinity for placing
billionaires in top cabinet and government roles. They include Betsy DeVos, the Amway Queen, Wilbur Ross, Vincent Viola (who latter
withdraws from consideration), Todd Ricketts and Linda McMahon, of WWE fame.
Treasury Secretary
Steve Mnuchin is worth a paltry $300 million. You could argue, perhaps, that he
brings the common man’s perspective to White House deliberations.
___
“Nobody knew that health care could be so complicated.”
Every man, woman, and child in America, other than the president, knew
healthcare was complicated.
___
2/28/17: A raid in Yemen ends with death for
U.S. serviceman William “Ryan” Owens. Trump shirks responsibility – says the
raid was planned before he took office – says, hey, I’m only president. It
wasn’t my fault Owens was killed. It was the generals! “This was something they wanted to do. They came to me, they explained
what they wanted to do, the generals, who are very respected, the most
respected that we’ve had in many decades, I believe. And they lost
Ryan [emphasis added].”
You know in your heart:
if the raid had been a success, Trump would have claimed the plan as his own.
1/29/19: The six heads of U.S.
intelligence, representing 17 agencies, testify publicly before a Senate panel.
If the 42-page report compiled by experts is seen as representing a grade card
of Trump’s first two years in office, the best you can say is Twitter Thumbs has
an “incomplete.”
Depending on your grip on reality, you might go as high as a
“C.” Diplomacy is always hard, no matter the president. As a former history
teacher this blogger might suggest it’s almost impossible for anyone to score
higher than a “B” in an always chaotic, complex world. If you’re paying close
attention, however, you might give Trump an “F,” in part because he continues
to insist he deserves an “A+.” Delusion in diplomacy is
always a danger.
Director Dan Coats.
ISIS not
defeated; North Korea still has all its nukes.
Has ISIS been defeated, as Trump claims? Director of U.S.
National Intelligence Dan Coats, picked by Trump for the job, disagrees. “While
ISIS is nearing territorial defeat in Iraq and Syria,” he told a Senate panel,
“the group has returned to its guerrilla warfare roots while continuing to plot
attacks and direct its supporters worldwide. ISIS is intent on resurging and still commands thousands of fighters
in Iraq and Syria.”
“We must keep our eyes on ISIS,” Coats said.
Trump had claimed, earlier this month, that the problem of a
nuclear North Korea was also essentially solved. “Now, I say this: North
Korea, we’re doing very well [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted],” he
told gathered reporters. “And again, no rockets. There’s no rockets. There’s no
anything. We’re doing very well.”
Coats disagreed:
We currently assess that North
Korea will seek to retain its WMD [weapons of mass destruction] capabilities,
and is unlikely to completely give up its nuclear weapons and production
capabilities because its leaders ultimately view nuclear weapons as critical to
regime survival. Our assessment is bolstered by our observations of some
activity that is inconsistent with full denuclearization.
There have been reports the North Koreans are building new
missile launching sites even as they “negotiate.”
Gina Haspel, Director of the C.I.A. was asked about Iran, the
country Trump would most like to bomb. Here’s how The Times of Israelsums up her testimony:
Iran is still abiding by the
terms of the 2015 nuclear deal despite the US pullout from the
multinational agreement, CIA chief Gina Haspel said Tuesday.
“At the moment technically they
are in compliance” with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Haspel
told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“I think the most recent
information is the Iranians are considering taking steps that would lessen
their adherence to JCPOA as they seek to pressure the European to come
through with the investment and trade benefits that Iran hoped to gain from the
deal,” she said.
Or you might put it this way. Iran still has zero nukes, just as Obama hoped would be true
when he and leaders of Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia negotiated
the JCPOA deal.
The best
news Trump hears all day.
Now that Trump has pulled out of the deal, the Iranians are
restive. The danger is clear. With little to lose, they may decide to void the
JCPOA and start working toward gaining nuclear weapons, themselves. Iran may
become a bigger problem than ever. North Korea still has all its nukes. The
President of the United States believes he’s the best deal maker in the history
of our country.
Last, but not least, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray says he
expects the Russians to interfere in the 2020 election.
This is the best news the president hears all day.
10/27/19: Late Saturday, into Sunday,
the president had one of his better moments as reluctant leader of the Free
World. Shortly after 9:00 a.m. on Sunday, Trump was able to march out in front
of waiting cameras and announce that U.S. Special Forces had killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS
mastermind, during a well-planned, well-executed raid in northwestern Syria.
Let us pause a moment to
agree, as Americans, as decent human beings: Good riddance to al-Baghdadi, a
bloody murderer.
Unfortunately,
the moment was blighted when the president (as always) made the story about
him. First, as we have come to expect, there was a great deal of “ME, ME, ME”
in his description of what transpired.
You may remember that it used
to infuriate Citizen Trump, when President Obama took the slightest credit for
the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Later, when the man who planned and
ordered that raid, Admiral William McRaven, joined the legions of his critics,
Trump attacked him too. In an appearance on Fox News, in November 2018, our
current president grumbled, “Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama
bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice?”
(More on that in a moment.)
Speaking to the
American people, Sunday morning, Trump offered a taste of his greatness. “I’ve been looking for him for three years,” Trump said, of
al-Baghdadi. “I’ve been looking for him. I started getting some very positive
feedback about a month ago, and we had some incredible intelligence officials
that did a great job.”
Trump clearly seemed to be hogging the credit;
but would his chat get stranger? We’ve seen this before. If he was going to
grab all the glory that he was sure he deserved, Mr. Trump would have to
make his success sound bigger and better than the success of his predecessor.
Yes, the U.S. military got Osama bin Laden, in May 2011. But this killing of
al-Baghdadi, with the great Donald J. Trump in charge, “this is the biggest
there is,” he insisted, when it came to rating killings.
Of course, you might remember, back in the day,
when Obama got Osama, that Trump poo-pooed his success. How long had it taken
him to find the leader of Al Qaeda! Good god. Obama had been in office for two
years, and three months, when Seal Team Six surrounded the hideout of the mastermind
of the 9/11 attacks and filled him with well-deserved bullet holes.
Trump decided that since he was standing before a
bank of cameras, he should mention “a really very successful book” he wrote,
before anyone else knew who Osama bin Laden was. Trump wanted us to appreciate
his prescience:
I’m
writing a book. World Trade Center had not come down...And I’m saying to people
take out Osama bin Laden, that nobody ever heard of. I mean, al-Baghdadi
everybody hears of because he’s built this monster for a long time. But nobody
ever heard of Osama bin Laden until really the World Trade Center. But about a
year before the World Trade Center came down, the book came out. I was talking
about Osama bin Laden. I said, “You have to kill him. You have to take him
out.” Nobody listened to me.
Clearly, the president was excited to have a chance to talk about something besides
how he held up military aid to the Ukrainians to force them to help him in the
2020 election. “If you read my book,” he continued, “there’s a book just before
the World Trade Center came down, and I don’t get any credit for this, but
that’s okay, I never do. But here we are. A very, very successful book,” he
said. “If they would have listened to me, a lot of things would have been
different.”
“I wrote 12 books, all did very well,” he added. Had he
mentioned how great he was? He was a great author, too.
*
EITHER WAY, GOOD WORK, America’s
fighting men and women! We wouldn’t quibble here, on this blog, except to take
note again of Trump’s shameless hypocrisy. Back when Seal Team Six was killing
the terrorist leader, Citizen Trump loved to tweet his disdain. “Stop
congratulating Obama for killing Bin Laden,” he objected. “The Navy Seals
killed Bin Laden.”
Fox News agreed,
of course. No credit for Obama!!!
“The military and Navy Seals
should be given more credit for Bin Laden’s death, not Obama, who works hard to
take all the credit away from them,” Trump grumbled in another tweet.
Trump even washed up on the
shores of CNN for a chat
with Wolf Blitzer. Bah! Obama! What did he have to do with military success in
killing Osama? “But anybody sitting in that office,
Wolf, would have – I keep hearing about,
oh, bin Laden, the military did an incredible job and they called and they
said, we have him. And he [Obama] said, go get him,” Trump complained.
Obama did nothing.
“What’s he going to say, don’t get him? And he
gets all this credit? It’s a lot of crap,” Trump continued.
Eleven months later, he was still bitching about
President Obama and the raid that killed bin Laden.
Trump later decided he didn't like Admiral McRaven either.
*
THAT WAS THEN; and this was now; and President
Trump was painting himself as the great man of action.
This was his chance to revel in glory and describe the attack
in gory detail. U.S. troops, he explained, flew in on eight helicopters, across
dangerous territory. Some of that territory was controlled by Russian forces.
The U.S. military had to notify them to avoid trouble. Trump thanked Russia for
its cooperation.
(He
really likes Russia.)
Landing near a compound where the leader of ISIS was hiding,
our brave soldiers blew a hole in the wall, rather than risk entering by a
possibly booby-trapped main entrance. Trump said he saw it all from the White
House Situation Room, “like watching a movie.” The attackers exchanged fire
with a number of ISIS fighters, wiped them out, and suffered no casualties,
save for one of their dogs. That dog was “a beautiful dog,” the president said,
and that dog was injured. But that dog was a hero. And that dog was following
orders from President Trump, who was the real hero.
Luckily, that dog didn’t have bone spurs.
Al-Baghdadi headed for a tunnel. He had three of his children
with him. He was wearing a suicide vest. But the tunnel was a dead end. The
ISIS leader was trapped. Just the way Trump planned it! He blew himself to
bits. Also, his children. His body, Trump told the American people, was torn to
pieces. So were theirs’. He skipped over that detail. It took a sophisticated
DNA test to prove the bit and pieces were him. Boy, oh boy, Trump wanted us to
know. He killed the head of ISIS.
It was like he was there, leading the attack himself. What a
hero Donald John Trump was. Were reporters getting all of this down on paper?
Naturally, the president had to talk smack. He called
al-Baghdadi’s followers “losers” and “frightened puppies.” Their leader “died
after running into a dead-end tunnel, whimpering, screaming and crying all the
way…He died like a dog, he died like a coward, he was whimpering, screaming and
crying,” Trump repeated. “And frankly, I think it’s something that should
be brought out.”
All in all, it was a typical Trumpian performance. The
president explained that he had not called Democratic leaders to notify them
about the raid. He said he didn’t want leaks. Sure, he notified the Russians.
But could you trust Pelosi? Trump wanted us to know he didn’t think you could.
He thanked the Russians and Turks for allowing the raid to go off without
interference. He skipped over the Kurds, however, even though tips from their
informants provided the U.S.A. with critical information necessary to pinning
down al-Baghdadi’s location.
(Trump
doesn’t like the Kurds anymore.)
This also seemed like a perfect time to attack our European
allies, because they refused to take the thousands of ISIS prisoners – the ones
the Kurds had been guarding until Trump pulled our forces out of northern
Syria. As for the work of U.S. intelligence in locating the feared ISIS leader,
Trump thought he should mention he was often forced to work with “people who
aren’t very intelligent having to do with intel.”
In closing, Trump called the leader of ISIS a “gutless
animal.” “Thank you all very much,” he told reporters. “I appreciate it.”
And off he went, probably to find a mirror and gaze in wonder
at his own glorious, orange reflection.
*
SPEAKING OF HEROES, at almost the same moment, when the
president was trumpeting his own greatness, Jack Tapper, on Face the Nation,
was talking to officers who had served with Ambassador Bill Taylor, when he was a young
U.S. Army officer, dodging bullets in Vietnam.
In the view of men like retired Gen. Karl Eikenberry, an old
comrade, Taylor was a hero, not “human scum.” (See: 10/22-24/19.)
A true hero.
*
SUNDAY NIGHT, Trump showed up for Game 5 of the World Series,
between the Washington Nationals and Houston Astros. Here he was! The
conquering commander-in-chief. Yet, when his image appeared on the big screen
at the D.C. ballpark, he was roundly booed.
Then the crowd began to chant, “Lock him up! Lock him up!”
which you figure ruined his mood – now that he had killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
with his own bare, orange hands.
Critics noticed that the president had invited several
toadies to attend the game, including Rep. Matt Gaetz and Rep. John
Ratcliffe. Barron Trump, his 13-year-old son, was not in attendance.
So, Trump sucked at being a dad.
Some pundits defended the president and insisted, short of trial and
conviction, that Americans should not be shouting, “Lock him up!” or “Lock her
up!” at any American citizen, including Big Don. This blogger certainly agrees
one should never demand that anyone be locked up, until that other person has
been found guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt.
Even then, one should be wary of mistakes in the justice
system.
But one might well take a certain degree of pleasure in
seeing Trump’s tactics turned against him.
POSTSCRIPT: When Admiral McRaven criticized
Trump in an opinion piece in The New York Times a few days before, the
president suddenly realized that McRaven didn’t deserve credit for killing
Osama either. It took Obama and McRaven two years, three months to get Osama.
What crap!
Whereas he got Al-Baghdadi quick! In only two years, nine
months, which, according to Trump Math, is faster.
(See:
2/7/20, for an explanation of the miracles possible
with Trump Math.)
