Politics

Donald Trump today called it a ‘very sad situation.’ The ‘it’ in question is of course the chemical weapons attack in Salisbury, a fresh indicator, if one were needed, of malign Russian intentions toward the West. Even as Theresa May plays, or tries to play, Margaret Thatcher, Trump has been no Ronald Reagan. He doesn’t want anyone 'Russian to judgment', as the joke has it. Instead, when it comes to Moscow, he’s been missing in action, no friend of the United Kingdom. He’s sounded in fact more like the equivocating Jeremy Corbyn than anyone else when it comes to the brouhaha over Salisbury.

President Trump continues to shake up his White House team. As early as tomorrow he plans to name Larry Kudlow, a senior contributor to CNBC, to replace Gary Cohn as his National Economic Council chief.  Kudlow is an old chum of Trump’s and an inveterate supply-sider whose gospel is that the more you lower tax rates, the more money the government will receive in overall revenues. At the same time, former United Nations ambassador John Bolton remains in play to replace national security adviser H.R. McMaster, though a stumbling block could prove to be whether or not he is willing to shave off the moustache that Trump apparently finds so offensive.

The surprising thing isn’t that Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. It is that it took this long. Tillerson, a hapless manager who decapitated much of the senior ranks of the State Department, has finally suffered his own decapitation at the he hands of Trump. His replacement by CIA Director Mike Pompeo signals  a much bolder and more activist Trump foreign policy. At the most basic level Pompeo will work to restore the depleted ranks of the foreign service. His close ties to Trump—he has visited him daily at the White House—means that he will not be at the receiving end of Trump’s barbs as was Tillerson. He will be able to restore some lustre to a once proud institution. Pompeo will also influence policy.

For two years we’ve been hearing that Donald Trump is an 'isolationist', whatever that word is supposed to mean. Only now two op-ed writers in the New York Times have discovered that he isn’t — instead, Thomas Meaney and Stephen Wertheim write, 'Let’s call Mr. Trump’s vision what it is: radical American imperialism.' Let’s not, because it isn’t true. On the contrary, Donald Trump is the most anti-imperialist president in a generation, even if he is also far from being a mythical 'isolationist'. North Korea is isolationist, and perhaps Meiji Japan was, too. But Great Britain had a world empire when 'splendid isolation' was a maxim of Conservative leaders’ foreign policy in the 19th century.

I can understand some people not liking the current president of the United States. As Conrad Black put it recently, ‘Donald Trump is a strange cat and an acquired taste.’ What I don’t understand is people who should know better being afraid of Donald Trump. For example, how can it be that among all the experienced, eccentric and supposedly visionary denizens of Silicon Valley, only Peter Thiel recognised that Donald Trump is cut from the same cloth as the most celebrated tech titans: a disruptor, an innovator, a maverick, and an up-and-coming ‘crazy one,’ in the mould of the myth-makers to whom the famous 1980s Apple ads paid homage?

Is Texas, the Lone Star State, about to get a little lonesome for the GOP? There’s been lots of talk in recent months that Senator Ted Cruz may face a stiffer challenge for reelection than he had anticipated. But now a wave of Democratic voter enthusiasm today in primary elections is adding further credibility to that notion. The Washington Post reports that of almost 900,000 ballots cast in early voting, over 52 percent were for Democrats, a substantial boost over the last primary election in 2014. The question that looms for Republicans is this: will Texas turn blue? Is it going to become another California? Republicans are sounding alarms. Texas Senator John Cornyn says it would be “malpractice” not to ramp up Republican efforts to ensure turnout in November.

If accounts in the press are to be believed, President Trump has reached a fresh nadir. “These are the darkest days in at least half a year,” reports The Washington Post. “Sources close to President Trump say he is in a bad place,” chimes in the impressively-sourced Axios. Buried in the Post story is a contradictory take from close friend Chris Ruddy, the Newsmax chief: “I’m bewildered when I see these reports that he’s in turmoil. Every time I speak to him he seems more relaxed and in control than ever. He seems pretty optimistic about how things are shaping up.” At the end of the day, only the top man himself knows how he’s feeling. But read between the lines, and a compelling antithesis emerges.

U.S. Defence Secretary Jim Mattis is blocking former Ambassador John Bolton from taking over as National Security Advisor, Cockburn has learned. John Bolton was first reported as heir apparent to McMaster by The National Interest in January. McMaster was nearly ousted from the White House summer of last year, ostensibly by a faction lead by former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon. Though the White House officially denied his political demise on Thursday, this time McMaster’s position is far more precarious. NBC News reported earlier in the day Thursday that McMaster was to be imminently replaced—with Ford executive and Bush 43 alum Stephen Biegun, as Bolton was vetoed by Mattis—sending the American capitol aflutter.