American Governance, Trump Style

 

American Governance, Trump Style

Ignorance (Feigned and Real), Blame, Surrounded Only by Loyalists, Fabricate, Deny, Double-Down

“I run the country and the world,” 

President Trump to reporters for the Atlantic in April, by way of explaining how his current presidency differs from his first.

“We both agree on this war and how terrible this war is going on, and we are both looking for ways to stop it very soon. And I told the president … he is the key person in the world who can really do that now by putting pressure on Russia.” 

 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz after White House meeting on June 5th.

“Sometimes you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other, and they’re fighting in a park, and you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled… Sometimes you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart. And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday. I said, ‘President, maybe you have to keep fighting and suffering a lot’ because both sides are suffering, before you pull them apart before they’re able to be pulled apart.” Trump to reporters while hosting German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office.

It’s never comfortable to reach the conclusion that the President of the United States is most likely seriously mentally ill. Certainly, that’s what his cousin (he grew up with her) believes… Mary Trump, a psychologist with a PhD. Trump lives in a world that exists only in his own mind, the product of being abandoned by his mother and raised into ruthless “pragmatism” by an autocratic father, according to Dr. Trump. It is reinforced by making sure no one who disagrees with him is anywhere near him, going out of his way to disable, punish and destroy those who oppose him any way he can. We can no long trust statements and policies from his coterie of subpar cabinet appointments, much less those uttered by the President himself.

The above quotes say a great deal about that “other world.” We know that children fighting in a school yard bears no resemblance to a struggle for existence by a nation invaded by another country covetous of its land, a war that has taken well over a million lives. In reality, Trump’s and his former “co-president’s” exchanging vituperative social media posts seems more to resemble those pre-adolescents exchanging “schoolyard” barbs… but very much unlike a massive exchange of crushing drone and missile attacks that just keep killing.

Remember when, during Campaign 2.0, Trump said he was unfamiliar with and had not read the 900-page Project 2025 (I believe he never actually read it, but …), yet as soon as he took office, step-by-step, his executive orders marched single file down the Project 2025 agenda. LA Times columnist, Jackie Calmes summarized Trump’s foreign policy, immediately implemented by his sycophantic Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, like this: ”The ‘Trump Doctrine’ revealed… The president’s foreign policy is ‘Me, Myself and I’ — strictly transactional and motivated less by national interest than what’s in it, personally and politically, for him.” Today, after decades of unscrupulous business deals, the only part of Trump’s “me first mind” that operates on seeming autopilot is his unsatiable quest for money – by grift or influence pedaling – and power.

There seems to be a particularly cruel and blithefully incentive streak that seems to illustrate how Trump’s retinue seems particularly to enjoy the pain and suffering they can inflict on others. For those in his MAGA constituency, who harbor admiration for a strongman with no moral or legal guidelines – a perception of masculinity – Trump’s behavior is just what they wanted: to take down and destroy what MAGA millions have defined as their elitist oppressors, a conveniently fabricated woke, liberal, child-predatory “deep state.”

This MAGA constituency press for religious doctrine to replace the kind of “elitist” intellectual rigor that is too complex to understand. They outsource their opinions to their perceived savior. But that empowered leader’s policies and legislative/executive order agenda are focused to separate the United States into the rich ruling class, to whom society is beholden, and the “rest of America,” increasingly expendable as their income falls, that no longer matters. Under Trump, all the definitions of success are money-based metrics (even though he is quite willing to manipulate those numbers if they do not jibe with his “reality”), government as a business with a P&L statement, instead of the measure of health, welfare and enrichment of the people as a whole. Contrary to popular belief, the United States is not a brand, it is a nation of people.

Jackie Calmes continues: ”Aside from his vague ‘America First’ (white) nationalist sloganeering, Trump speaks and acts in ways that reflect little appreciation for the national interest or democratic ideals. He’s all about himself and his interests — increasingly, that literally means his business interests…

“Which is why, contrary to past presidents for decades, Trump twice now has made his first foreign trip as president not to allies in Europe or North America who share America’s values, but to autocratic Saudi Arabia. There, and in the smaller, oil-rich Middle Eastern monarchies he also visited last month, Trump is plainly comfortable, amid the opulence and the shared language of deal-making. In fact, Trump explicitly told reporters soon after his inauguration that he’d likely travel first to Saudi Arabia — if it agreed in advance to spend about $500 billion in the United States. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman gamely offered $600 billion over four years.

“Ultimately, Trump came home from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates boasting of bagging $5 trillion — that’s trillion, with a T — or maybe $7 trillion, he said, along with a Qatari royal jet for his own use. What details there were suggested that the trade deals for which the president was taking credit — no surprise here — included some commitments dating to the Biden administration.

“In any case, Americans shouldn’t necessarily count on the promised investments: Saudi Arabia’s MBS similarly vowed to spend up to $600 billion in the United States back in 2017, when Trump first took office. Yet a study by the Arab Gulf States Initiative concluded that over Trump’s first term, U.S. exports to Saudi Arabia totaled $92 billion — below the $110 billion in exports during the preceding four years under President Obama.

“But here’s what you can count on: As the Wall Street Journal has reported, the Trump family business is signing more deals internationally than ever before, mostly in the Middle East but also in India and eastern Europe, for 12 projects including residential high-rises, luxe hotels and golf courses. Beyond real estate, there’s the Trumps’ $2-billion cryptocurrency deal with the United Arab Emirates state fund. America First?... ‘We’re the hottest brand in the world right now,’ son Eric Trump, who runs the Trump Organization, told the Journal. That’s good, I guess, because the American brand under Trump has hit the skids.

“The other noxious sign of Trump’s personalization of foreign policy: his constant references to foreign leaders in terms of his own relations with them. Trump’s problem is that his supposed friends — the Saudis’ MBS, Netanyahu, Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping — have ideological and national interests that, unlike for Trump, transcend their personal feelings and stakes.” A US president is supposed to be the caretaker of the nation in its entirety, sacrificing for the betterment of the country he/she has been entrusted to lead under his sacred oath of office. An oath that has been rendered meaningless by Donald Trump. 

I’m Peter Dekom, and as GOP candidates panic as their constituents lose medical benefits as costs around them skyrocket – don’t worry MAGAns; the Dems lack a coherent platform or unifying leadership – they understand full well that if the provisions of that Big Beautiful Bill pass even remotely as drafted, the people who voted for them will be “the biggest losers.”