5/24/18: Let’s get another day in Trumpistan off to a rousing start. Fox & Friends is running a taped interview with the president. He’s stoked to hear the NFL will fine players who kneel during the National Anthem!
After all, nothing says, “I love the land of the free, and the home of the brave” more than squelching the right to protest.
The NFL does say players can remain in their locker rooms if they prefer.
Trump can’t talk long before making it clear how he feels about the rights of those with whom he disagrees. “Well, I think that’s good,” he tells the three hosts, Larry, Curly, and Ainsley, referencing the fines. “I don’t think people should be staying in locker rooms. But still, I think it’s good.”
Then Trump takes it ten steps too far. “You have to stand proudly for the national anthem, or you shouldn’t be playing, you shouldn’t be there. Maybe you shouldn’t be in the country.”
“SPYGATE - a terrible thing!”
Trump doesn’t have much chance to celebrate the news because he has a spy problem on his hands or in his head. In Trump’s muddled thinking, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies were spying on his campaign. He tweets out “evidence,” which often means he’s making it up.
At 7:21 we get: “Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!”
The meeting between members of Congress and representatives
of the U.S. intelligence community, to get to the bottom of this Spygate mess,
is on for later. (See: 5/23/18. Trump has already told the same lie about
what Clapper said.)
*
BEFORE THAT MEETING can take place, Trump learns another lesson. Diplomacy, like love, is hard.
The much-ballyhooed June 12 summit with North Korea is canceled.
Here, your favorite blogger should be clear. He would not fault Trump on most foreign policy matters, were Trump not so gleeful in bashing predecessors for “failures” identical to his own. Trump will take credit for every step forward the United States makes on any front. He will blame everyone else for any step back.
This much is true in 2018 and has been true for years: None of the options to contain Kim Jong-un’s rogue regime are good. Trump is simply the latest U.S. president to discover that fact.
____________________
History
shows that diplomacy is always messy and complex.
____________________
This blogger would point out that history shows that diplomacy is always messy and complex. The Spartans and Athenians could not resolve their differences 2,500 years ago. The Peloponnesian War dragged on for twenty-seven years. The Israelis and Palestinians can’t settle their differences today. And, despite Jared Kushner’s best efforts, they won’t anytime soon. North Korea has been a nettle for the U.S. to grasp since attacking South Korea on June 1, 1950.
This is the way the world works, always has worked, and always will work. Diplomacy is hard.
China has been both an active and silent actor in what is a long-running play. In the winter of 1950, the Chinese sent hundreds of thousands of troops crashing across the Yalu River and smashed into American, South Korean and U.N. forces. Harry Truman was the first president to learn that North Korea, backed by China, would present a challenge to the interests of the United States.
It may still prove that Trump and his team have a good backup plan despite the cancelation of talks, that perhaps back channel movements are likely. Still, it’s hard not to laugh at a fool like Trump, who wants nothing so much as to be praised. Gone for now is his chance at a Nobel Peace Prize, which, if you believe the Big Orange Buffoon, everybody was saying he deserved.
In order to cancel the summit, Trump sends the following letter to the Chairman of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea:
Like a weird breakup letter.
The missive reads like a weird breakup letter. “I felt a wonderful dialogue was building up between you and me,” Trump writes. “I look very much forward to meeting you” someday, the lovesick U.S. leader moans. He can’t forget Kim’s “beautiful gesture” when the romance seemed strong. He can’t believe the “tremendous anger” now directed his way.
Like a jilted lover, Trump makes his deepest feelings clear. If he can’t have Kim, no one can! He’ll blow him to bits. “You talk about your nuclear capabilities, but ours are so massive and powerful that I pray to God they will never have to be used.”
Of course, there’s a reason no nation has exploded an atomic bomb on an enemy in 73 years. If we use our “massive” nuclear arsenal we’re going to roast millions of men, women, and children. Most would be innocent human beings who don’t like Kim any more than good Americans do.
Kim has the capacity to hit targets in the continental United States, which is new, and not Trump’s fault. Yet we must remember, previous presidents had to consider a similar dilemma. They knew Kim had the ability to turn Seoul (and possibly Tokyo) into a smoking hole in the ground. The only difference between 2006, when North Korea got its first nuclear bomb, and 2018, is that Los Angeles is now in range.
But at least we’ve got a few cool medallions (coined before the meeting was canceled) we can toss and flip.
Naturally, they show Trump’s face. (See: 6/1/18.)
*
WITH HOPES for a Nobel dashed, Trump can console himself knowing there’s a meeting scheduled to consider spying on his campaign.
“Nothing particularly surprising.”
According to the propaganda people at Fox News, this meeting will allow Congress to get to the bottom of the Spygate mess. For some odd reason, Democrats in Congress think they should attend.
One meeting becomes two.
Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy attend the first. Speaker Paul Ryan tags along. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray, and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats arrive. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has secured a seat, after Democrats point out that Trump’s interest in “total transparency” (see: 5/23/18) might be more believable if members of both parties were allowed to take part.
But then the tale takes an odd twist. Remember, this is a meeting called because Congress has a duty to exercise oversight over the Executive Branch. To the surprise of nearly everyone, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Trump defense lawyer Emmet Flood appear.
Flood is indubitably not a member of Congress. He has no reason to be sitting in a meeting such as this, unless to get the scoop on what investigators might know about his boss.
And if Congress is trying to ensure proper oversight over the Executive Branch, why is Kelly there?
Kelly and Flood, at least according to White House Press Secretary Pinocchio, speak briefly and leave.
A Republican congressional staffer, hearing they appeared, says, “That’s the craziest shit I ever heard.”
A second meeting is required because several top congressional leaders were unable to attend the first. Those present are Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer for the Democrats, Nunes again, Sen. Mark Warren, a Democrat, and Sen. Richard Burr and Sen. Milksop Mitch for the Republicans. The same three intelligence heads give a similar briefing to the group.
On Fox News, soon after, Brett Baier asks Milksop Mitch to describe the meeting just ended.
“Were you surprised by what you learned?” Baier wants to know. Were there, like, dozens of spies!!!!
“Nothing particularly surprising,” Milksop replies. “But
again, it was classified, so there’s no real, no real report I can give to
you.”
*
MEANWHILE, DETAILS about the idiocy and mendacity of President Trump continue to spill out.
Two days ago, after watching too much cable news, Trump claimed the F.B.I. informant who talked to three members of his campaign had been paid “a massive amount of money … many times higher than normal” to spy on his campaign. That informant, now revealed to be Stefan Halper, looks a lot less suspicious if one turns off the television and searches for truth. As Politifact notes, his biography impresses. Halper is “professor emeritus at Cambridge University in England where he lectures on international security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Political-Military Affairs in the Reagan administration.”
At the time he was being paid to talk to three members of the Trump team (see: 5/21/18), he was also working on a study of Russian-Chinese relationships, and Halper was paid by the Pentagon, not the F.B.I.
The tab for all his work, both “spying” on Trump and doing Pentagon research, came to $244,960.
Guess how much Halper earned working for the Pentagon from
9/29/2017 to 3/29/2018, while Trump had his fanny planted on his Oval Office
throne? Halper earned $411,575 on Trump’s watch.
*
IN RELATED NEWS, the president told allies earlier in the
week that he wanted “to brand” Halper a “spy,” not an informant. According to
the Associated Press, he told confidants he thought that sounded more ominous, and would stir up his base.
Typically, whether he had the facts straight or not, never entered into the
calculations of the President of the United States.
