Trust is Not a Factor

If you are family. If you never question the boss and do exactly what he says. And if you can take the pressure, cross the line and assume the risk, knowing that you will be sacrificed and dumped if that’s what it takes to protect the boss. Fine. For everyone else on staff or in a position of power in the administration… and for the rest of the world… you have Donald Trump working with you only so long as it suits his purpose. Trump has no loyalty, despises consistency, governs by keeping his opponents and even purported allies off-balance. 

He understands social media and how to hold his base, catering to their fears and totally controlling the medium that sets their tone: Fox News. “Donald Trump might not be president were it not for Fox News, the right-wing network that for years gave the blustery game show host a political platform and in 2016 promoted his long-shot candidacy. His symbiotic relationship with Fox has continued as president, with the outlet essentially acting as state media, not to mention an employee pipeline. But lately there’s been trouble in paradise. While hosts like Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham are as loyal as ever, the president has grown increasingly angry with other of the network’s reporters, including Chris Wallace and Shep Smith, along with polls that suggest its viewers are coming around on his impeachment. ‘It is so different than it used to be,’ Trump lamented Thursday [10/10].

“It was against this backdrop that William Barr, Trump’s dutiful attorney general, met with Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch on Wednesday night [10/9]. Why they met, or what they discussed, is not clear, according to the New York Times, which first reported the rendezvous. But the timing of the meeting—as Trump, under siege from Democrats, ramps up his criticism of Fox News—raised eyebrows, leading to questions about whether the administration is attempting to get the network back in line. ‘What is the Attorney General of the United States doing meeting with the owner of a private television network?’ CNN’s Vicky Ward tweeted Thursday [10/10].” Vanity Fair, October 11th. 

Two days after that meeting: “Shepard Smith, the chief Fox News anchor who was despised by President Trump, said on his Friday program [10/11] that after more than two decades at the network, he was stepping down and leaving the company.” CNNBusiness.com, October 11th. Coincidence? Right, uh-huh. For Trump, constantly being the focus of liberal and conservative media, “it’s all about me,” is just marketing.

There’s a general feeling among Senate Republicans, stated privately, that there are only two possibilities that could move the Senate to convict and remove Donald Trump as president: a secret ballot (not happening) and if Fox News turned on Trump. Does that make Rupert the most powerful influence on the President? And exactly… exactly… what’s the deal? 

For most of those who have seriously studied history and economics, Donald Trump is a walking disaster. While rich corporate interests may adore his massive and unneeded tax cut, his moves to deregulate, given the ballooning deficit and accelerating environmental and financial nasties, it is equally clear that his policies are not remotely in the best interest of most Americans. But nothing evidences his incompetence like his foreign policy, shifting and twisting in a wind-driven maelstrom.

North Korea has ceded nothing despite the bromance between the President and brutal Kim Jong-un. 

Tensions with Iran are escalating as they restart their nuclear enrichment program and seem willing to bear the toll of American sanctions… following Trump’s unilateral disavowal of the UN nuclear accord. China is the hands-down winner in the interim, phase one trade agreement with the United States. Farmers are probably permanently damaged, despite “promises to buy” from China… which has shifted its agricultural import strategy to buy from more reliable nations that have no powerful political agenda. China is also “immediately on scene” when America cuts any foreign aid… ready to step in to replace us.

By giving Benjamin Netanyahu legitimacy in his rather dramatic reduction of local Palestinian hopes and rights, making symbolic changes (moving our embassy to Jerusalem or stating that the Golan Heights will always belong to Israel) that are a slap in the face to regional allies, Trump has all but removed the United States as a potential influential mediator for regional disputes. The biggest winner in the international scene remains Russia. Trump refuses to accept what Congressional committees, from both sides of the aisle, have affirmed (along with every US intelligence agency): Russia was and continues to be deeply meddling in our election process.

Even as he castigates traditional allies, Trump cozies up to continuing and temporary foes. Breaking treaties, going it alone, doing what he perceives to be best for Donald Trump regardless to the risk of harm to the United States, the President has made the United States fundamentally an unreliable world power, whose word has become meaningless. 

Even as our official policy of supporting Ukraine because of a clear and present danger from Russian forces operating within its borders with annexation on the agenda, it certainly appears that the President withheld almost $400 million in necessary military aid that Ukraine needed to restrain that Russian threat… to force Ukraine to investigate the Democratic frontrunner and his family and find dirt. 

Russians smiled again when Donald Trump unilaterally (and without consulting his experts) announced the withdrawal US troops from Northern Syria and seems to have given Turkey’s President, Recep Erdogan, a greenlight to attack the very same Kurdish forces that fought with us against ISIS. A “but he knew what we were going to do” from the Turkish President on October 16th. Erdogan calls them “terrorists” because they want more autonomy in their ethnic enclaves. We called them allies and friends. Oh, Trump just suggested they were worse than ISIS, but he was alone among Republicans in that assessment. Simply, we abandoned them. The result: a massive Turkish incursion into northern Syria to crush the Kurds, now abandoned by the United States, who turned to the only folks who might help them: Assad’s brutish military, Russia and Iran. ISIS prisoners, held by the Kurds, were escaping detention facilities by the thousands. Will they find ways to attack America and her interests again?

Trump tweeted: “Let Syria and Assad protect the Kurds… Anyone who wants to assist Syria in protecting the Kurds is good with me, whether it is Russia, China or Napoleon Bonaparte. I hope they all do great, we are 7000 miles away!” When GOP Senators decried the measure, Trump slapped some meaningless sanctions on Turkey, economic perils that would take months to have any impact. Then the Republicans smiled and said all the bad decisions Trump made were really the result of the destabilizing impact of the impeachment inquiry. Huh? OK, a bizarre letter from Donald Trump to Erdogan, Kurds dying in the field, American evangelicals fearing the rise of Israel’s mortal enemy, Iran, and a few Republicans began breaking ranks. And then…

But Peter, didn’t Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo just implement a Trump-directed and Erdogan-accepted Syrian border ceasefire on Thursday, October 17th, that solved everything? Look at Trump’s tweets:  Oct 17, 2019 01:13:15 PM - This is a great day for civilization. I am proud of the United States for sticking by me in following a necessary, but somewhat unconventional, path. People have been trying to make this “Deal” for many years. Millions of lives will be saved. Congratulations to ALL!  Oct 17, 2019 01:03:25 PM - This deal could NEVER have been made 3 days ago. There needed to be some “tough” love in order to get it done. Great for everybody. Proud of all!

Really? Only Trump could solve what he directly caused by that phone call to Erdogan? After Turkey’s troops effectively already accomplished what they set out to do: drive the Kurds out of their Syrian territory, giving them 120 hours to abandon the balance of the entire 20 mile Turkish-declared safe zone within Turkey? Coincidentally 120 hours before a Putin-Erdogan meeting? The Kurds got nothing. Turkey crushed them without any consequences (Trump removed the threat of sanctions against Turkey). Somewhere between 100 and 200 thousand people had already been displaced. Thousands of ISIS fighters were released. Untold numbers of Kurdish fighters lost their lives or were seriously injured. Where are the protections for the Kurds who fought side-by-side with us? Erdogan 10, Putin 10, Trump ZERO.

Trump’s policies are based on bullying and doing what the other side does not expect. Keep them off-balance. Who cares about “foreign” unless there is a Trump real estate deal there? Trump voters do not care about international matters anyway, so “do what you have always said America should do,” even if it does not make sense. It just has to sound good and be sold as “America First.” And since Republicans know that they cannot win elections without the base, and since the base is all Trump, all the time, do what the Trump-man tells them to do… or else. But was the base wavering on this “withdrawal from Syria” issue? Did a bi-partisan congressional rebuke to the President’s withdrawal reveal a new vulnerability?

“For his first years in the White House, Trump was surrounded by aides who tried to nudge him toward a conventional version of conservative internationalism: support for traditional allies, competition (if not confrontation) with Russia and China, a muscular U.S. role in the Middle East.

“Republicans in Congress tried to restrain him too, joining Democrats to slap sanctions on Russia over the president’s objections… Trump never liked it. Now, with a new national security advisor (his fourth in less than three years), an untested Defense secretary and a secretary of State acting as his most pugnacious defender, the president faces few restraints. He’s increasingly conducting foreign policy as he sees fit.

“What that means in practice should come as no surprise, because he’s reverting to views he’s held for more than 30 years… The popular notion that Trump is mercurial and inconsistent in foreign policy is mistaken, Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution wrote in a 2016 essay that remains one of the clearest dissections of the president’s strategic thinking: ‘He has a remarkably coherent and consistent worldview.’

“Trump doesn’t want U.S. troops fighting overseas. He’s willing to use air power, but reluctant to deploy troops on the ground — and implacably opposed to using U.S. forces for peacekeeping, which he dismisses as ‘police work.’

“He doesn’t much care who runs other parts of the world or how they run it, as long as they don’t ask the United States for help… He admires authoritarian rulers, including Turkey’s Erdogan, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, China’s Xi Jinping and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un… He has little interest in human rights or democracy promotion… And he’s allergic to lasting commitments, whether with small, dependent partners like the Kurds or long-standing allies like Germany, France and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“‘Trump’s starting point and defining emotion on foreign policy is anger — not at America’s enemies, but at its friends,’ Wright wrote… In 1990, Trump expressed grudging admiration for China’s massacre of protesting students in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. ‘They were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength,’ he said in an interview with Playboy magazine. ‘That shows you the power of strength.’

“And in a 2000 book on foreign policy, Trump bluntly proposed U.S. withdrawal from NATO, an idea he’s frequently returned to… The surprisingly rich record of early Trump pronouncements on world affairs provides a road map to future Trump policies.

“An unfettered Trump will seek to withdraw more of the remaining 14,500 U.S. troops from Afghanistan… He’ll renew his threat to take the United States out of NATO… He’ll be tempted to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea, especially if it can help him make a deal to freeze Kim Jong Un’s nuclear program. (The U.S. goal has long been to dismantle North Korea’s nukes, but Trump has tacitly redefined success at a less ambitious level.)… On the other hand, Saudi Arabia may continue to benefit from a U.S. defense umbrella… ‘They pay cash,’ Trump explained last month.” Doyle McManus, writing for the October 16th Los Angeles Times.

Trump also has little respect for the US Constitution, rails constantly against its Bill of Rights, finds federal statutes an annoyance and attempts by Congress to pass laws he does support are labeled as unpatriotic. He abhors anyone who opposes him, castigates them, creates lasting pejorative labels for them and denigrates their persona and their beliefs. Trump is and remains an a corporate autocratic who is not used to being challenged… on anything. We are now perceived as a rogue nation, unreliable and untrustworthy. Global diplomacy is increasingly predicated on “work-arounds” to exclude the United States from processes and new global treaties and accords. Can our democracy withstand such callous disregard of the rule of law? Maybe not.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and even post-Trump, will the rest of the world ever trust our word again?