Trump

What do you do when you are in an argument with an impossible child who sees you as the enemy? Do you shout at them until you sound as unreasonable? Do you keep going back to them to hash out the key points? No, you do not engage. You walk away and leave them to stew in their own rage. All parents know this. Donald Trump is often called childish; petulant; irascible — in his press conferences, he often is. His pride takes him over and he ends up ranting. He takes the bait and the media revels in it. But what the media can’t accept or understand is that, in the president vs media conference dynamic, it is the journalists who play the role of teenage brat. They goad Trump until he flips, then gloat about how mad he went.

It’s incredibly easy to blame President Trump for the coronavirus hell we're all living in. The president doesn’t help himself when he babbles for an hour and a half every single day behind the White House podium, about how smooth the federal government’s disaster management response has been, how superior his leadership. But the truth is much more complicated, troubling, and systemic. America wasn't prepared — and there is plenty of blame to go around. How the hell could the most powerful country in the world be so short-staffed in its hospitals?

Donald Trump is about to become only the third US president to be impeached —or charged with a crime — by Congress. The other two were Andrew Johnson, Lincoln’s successor, for firing his secretary of war in defiance of the House of Representatives; and Bill Clinton, for Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky (technically for perjury and obstruction of justice). Johnson and Clinton were acquitted in their trials in the Senate, as Trump almost certainly will be too. And, as Johnson and Clinton’s impeachments just confirmed their supporters or opponents’ opinion of them, so Trump will emerge as exactly the person we always thought he was. But there may be surprises along the way. The case against Trump is deceptively simple.

For three years, we have been told what Donald Trump is. We have been told that he is a racist, a xenophobe, a misogynist, a white supremacist, a demagogue, a Russian spy. The charges vary from extreme, unproven and serious to the bizarrely particular and trivial. We have for instance been repeatedly told that it is important that he has tiny hands, or silly hair, or eats McDonald's. Whether or not you agree with the many criticisms of Trump, there is one charge that supporters and detractors admit the truth of: Trump is divisive. But what does that mean? It does not necessarily mean, as the mainstream media always tell us, that he should be hated or considered dangerous. It could just mean that he reveals the deep faultlines in contemporary politics.

According to a New York Times report, ‘At the midpoint of his term, Mr Trump has grown more sure of his own judgment and more cut off from anyone else’s than at any point since taking office. He spends ever more time in front of a television…’ This is too much of a theme of the Trump presidency to be dismissed as more fake news. During his 2016 campaign, the Donald confessed to developing positions on national security and foreign policy by watching retired generals on the Sunday shows. These days, Trump has access to the FBI, CIA and other intelligence organizations – but has repeatedly expressed that he does not trust them.

If someone walks up to you and bangs a drum in your face, are you guilty of harassing the drummer? You might be if you’re white and wearing a MAGA hat. Just a day after rushing to judgment about a BuzzFeed story that claimed President Trump had instructed Michael Cohen to lie to Congress — a story Robert Mueller’s own office subsequently debunked, the blue-checkmark media elite had a new instant narrative to promote. It was a tale perfectly tailored to liberal biases: white Catholic teenagers in MAGA hats had harassed an old and frail Indian veteran during the March for Life, which was also the date of an Indigenous People’s March.

This is the sort of stage Donald Trump relishes. An Oval Office address during prime time is his chance to seize the political crisis crippling the federal government and turn it into a decisive win. It plays to his strengths: the connection with ordinary Americans; on-screen charisma; the opportunity for a big reveal. The Nancy and Chuck show – the Democratic party’s rejoinder to be broadcast from the Capitol – offers nothing in the way of that star power. But Trump needs to do more than turn up and rely on the Resolute Desk to do the work for him, channeling the power of previous presidents who have addressed the nation in time of crisis. Make no mistake, he is backed into a corner.

For Donald Trump, parting is never such sweet sorrow. He’s been jettisoning cabinet officials with rapidity. The latest is Defense Secretary James N. Mattis, whose stiff resignation letter has predictably enraged Trump, prompting him to appoint Patrick Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who has curried favor with Trump by backing a space force, as acting Defense Secretary starting January 1. This morning, Trump tweeted, ‘I am pleased to announce that our very talented Deputy Secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, will assume the title of Acting Secretary of Defense starting January 1, 2019. Patrick has a long list of accomplishments while serving as Deputy, & previously Boeing. He will be great!

Things are getting quite hairy at the White House. Apparently, senior adviser Stephen Miller reckoned that he needed to perform a cover-up before he went on national television this past Sunday. He seems to have sprayed on hair-in-a-canister to camouflage his glabrous head. Like many of the moves this administration has made, Miller’s gambit only drew more attention to what he wished to conceal. The Washington Post observed, ‘it emanated from Miller’s head like a physical manifestation of his personality — a follicle’d inferiority complex that was suddenly in charge of creating the nation’s policies.’ Since then, the White House has run into a fresh spate of bad news. Former Lt. Gen.

Oh how the anti-Trump media licks its lips at news that Ivanka, the precious First Daughter, may have breached federal rules by using her private email for government work. It seems a perfect rebuke to the President, who has made such a fuss about Hillary Clinton doing exactly the same thing. As endless Twitter bores pointed out last night, Trump still obsesses over Clinton’s server issues in his tweets and encourages his crowds to chant ‘Lock her up!’ What’s he going to say now? That media schadenfreude file is so huge it could overload your inbox. But the Washington Post’s latest Ivanka scoop should come as no great surprise.

All over America, election recounts are in progress. Is it a sign that democracy just doesn’t work as well as it used to? On the contrary, it’s a sign that Americans are more earnest now than ever before about getting the results right. Despite sharp polarization, nearly everyone believes that the candidate with the most votes should in fact take office. Thousands of men and women are working to make sure the count is accurate. They know that, all over the world, democracies fail when the losers refused to accept the verdict of the electorate, or when the winner abolishes the system that brought him to power. From their earliest schooldays they’ve had drummed into them the idea that fair elections are sacrosanct, their nation’s bedrock.

It seems like ancient history now, but the week before the ill-fated summit in Helsinki President Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. It was Trump’s second nomination to America’s highest court in as many years and conservatives overwhelmingly cheered his choice. “I’ve often heard that, other than matters of war and peace, this is the most important decision a President will make,” Trump said in the East Room of the White House. “The Supreme Court is entrusted with the safeguarding of the crown jewel of our Republic, the Constitution of the United States.” Kavanaugh was picked to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Republican appointee who was nevertheless a swing vote on the Supreme Court.

The big question that hangs over Donald Trump’s trip through Europe is not whether America’s NATO allies should spend more on defence or whether Vladimir Putin poses an overriding strategic threat to the continent. The big question is this: why should Uncle Sam continue to provide the military assets and leadership across the pond as it has for the past 70 years? The answer lies in understanding that the concept of a united political West is a tenuous and unconvincing one. Indeed, it should have been moribund since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of Soviet Communism. It’s now collapsing. True, the West has an obvious and historically glorious validity.