Trump Administration’s Weakest Skillsets: Governance & Diplomacy
Take, for example, how shutting down the Forrest Service just might cost billions
As Trump’s Iran WAR spirals out of control, as Trump’s influence with even “allied” nations slips into “ignore the idiot” level, Trump is still the President of the United States and capable of wreaking inestimable additional damage to our nation even as his popularity seems to have made him the lamest of the lame ducks. Trump unfortunately does not read, has no cultural sensitivity, tends to shoot from the hip, often listens to the last person he spoke with and prefers conspiracy theories to facts. With arrogant certainty, Trump and his mouthpiece JD Vance made some very public statements to the Hungarian people in support of PM Victor Orban (above) whose party was on the verge of a national election. But Trump’s stature in the world had fallen so dramatically everywhere that Orban, after 16 years as an illiberal elected autocrat (and literally the “model” for US conservative governance), and his party, lost in an unprecedented landslide. As Tom Boggioni, writing for the April 14th Raw Story tells us:
“According to Politico's Nahal Toosi, Trump faces a wall of resistance from longtime U.S. allies who are actively forming new alliances and sidelining America as a diplomatic partner. In recent days, multiple global players have openly defied the president, exposing the severe limits of American influence… The core problem is philosophical. ‘Trump and his aides often appear to operate as if most other people on the planet are 'non-player characters' in a video game,’ and they believe that America can use ‘threats, economic muscle and military action to bend other capitals to its will,’ Toosi observed.
“But foreign policy doesn't work that way and the Politico analyst suggested the current administration is ‘not adjusting well’ to a changed world… Trump shows no signs of learning from this reality. Richard Haass, former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, observed: ‘If there were an appreciation that bullying was no longer a likely to succeed tactic you'd see a move away from it, but there's no real sign that Trump is doing so…The problem is structural. ‘He is surrounded by 'yes' people,’ one senior European diplomat fumed.’” The outside world no longer couches their criticisms of the President in polite terms, unlike GOP leaders, marching like lemmings to midterm disaster, who are struggling even with the most obvious descriptors of Trump’s litany of failures. As the utter failure of Trump’s War is pushing the world toward recession with prices soaring by the day, so too are his recent domestic policies which survive only because his international disasters have proven to be major distractions.
Indeed, so much of Trump’s foreign and domestic policy moves have ended in flames, that it most appropriate to look at recent inane policies imposed by an incompetent, totally dollars-and-cents transactional, President, incapable of dealing in human values, relegated to “money talks” and not much else: our fire-vulnerable national forests. As reported by FastCompany’s Kristin Toussaint (April 9th), “Last week, the U.S. Forest Service announced that it will be closing three-quarters of its research facilities as part of a reorganization. Now, experts are worried not only about the number of scientists who might be leaving the agency, but also about how the disruption could affect the gathering and dissemination of crucial wildfire and climate change data.
“The restructuring comes as parts of the U.S. face what is expected to be a catastrophic wildfire season. The most recent wildland fire outlook shows that wildfire activity is already “well above average,” with more than 16,000 wildfires reported this year… Under the reorganization plan, the Forest Service will close 57 of 77 research facilities, as well as move its headquarters from Washington, D.C. to Salt Lake City, Utah. … It will also close all nine of its regional offices; some states will then get their own offices, but others will be consolidated…
“Julian Reyes, chief of staff at the Union of Concerned Scientists and previously a federal government civil servant who worked directly with Forest Service R&D scientists on climate research, says the move doesn’t make any sense, given the wildfire season we’re heading into… “The Forest Service will essentially no longer be the world’s leading wildfire research agency,” he adds [Reyes]. ‘They will be hamstrung forever, because they won’t have the right people, the right research capability at the right research stations, and so we’ll always be feeling these effects, probably for multiple generations. That’s what’s really sad about this.’”
And as the rest of the world retreats from coal, a fossil fuel that is never “clean,” Trump clings to his notion that climate change is a hoax: “Before Donald Trump returned to the White House, the Biden administration and many electric utilities were building a future dominated by renewable energy. They aimed to replace coal, slashing greenhouse gases and reducing air pollution that kills more than a thousand people annually.
“Dozens of coal plants — emitting as much planet-warming pollution as 27 million cars — were expected to be retired during Trump’s second term. Now there may not be any more coal plants closing until after Trump leaves office, according to officials and the energy analysis company Enverus… The United States is undergoing a dramatic shift in energy policy as Trump wields the government’s sweeping powers to benefit coal and suppress cleaner alternatives. It could lead to more expensive electricity and dirtier air and set back efforts to curb climate change, according to an Associated Press review of government data and interviews with experts.
“Trump officials are using emergency powers to prevent five coal plants from closing. That’s raising ratepayer bills: Keeping one Michigan plant open for about seven months cost $135 million. The administration also is using millions of dollars of taxpayer money to make repairs and extend the lives of other coal plants, while weakening protections against air pollution and, most recently, toxic coal ash… Interior Secretary Doug Burgum has said the goal for coal plants ‘is 100% stay open, no more retirements, no more shutting down.’.. The actions far exceed Trump’s coal advocacy in his first term, when he relaxed some environmental regulations to give it a short-lived boost.” Trump does not mind killing people, even Americans, in an effort to convince his followers that he is never wrong… when in fact, he is seldom correct.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I think the national antipathy against all things Trump may have reached the point, even as he desperately tries to rig the midterms, that MAGA politicians face an unstoppable landslide against them… but it will take decades to undo the damage this failed human being has wreaked on the United States.
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