Jacob Heilbrunn

An invader is in the Washington, DC area. It’s almost impossible to eradicate and large. It’s also quite noxious. “Now that there’s a confirmed sighting,” one local official told the Washington Post, “we need to be on the lookout.” The furor centers over the emergence of a giant hogweed from southwest Asia that emits toxic substances, but it also sums up the way NeverTrumpers view the Donald. Now that he’s locking ‘em up on the southern border, the internal opposition to Trump as a dangerous national security threat to America is reaching new heights. A case in point is Steve Schmidt, who helped direct the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush and John McCain.

Oh, dear. The myth that James Comey has sedulously cultivated of himself—the ascetic warrior for truth, the vigilant sentinel of liberty—is coming in for a bit of a pounding today. In his report to Congress on Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton investigation, the Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded, “While we did not find that these decisions were the result of political bias on Comey’s part, we nevertheless concluded that by departing so clearly and dramatically from FBI and department norms, the decisions negatively impacted the perception of the FBI and the department as fair administrators of justice.

Once upon a time California was a Republican redoubt, sending the likes of Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan to the White House. In recent decades, however, the popularity of the GOP has cratered. In 2016 Donald Trump lost the state by over four million votes to Hillary Clinton. CNBC reports that the number of registered Republicans has sunk from 36 per cent in 1997 to around 25 per cent. Democrats constitute about 45 per cent of the state’s total registered voters. Yesterday’s primary election offered another reminder of how far the mighty have fallen. The Golden State’s Republicans are celebrating the fact that they even managed to get a candidate, the San Diego businessman John H. Cox, on the November ballot.

Does Richard Grenell, the American ambassador to Germany, want to carry out another round of regime change in Deutschland? This is the construction that is being placed upon his temerarious remarks to Breitbart by many German politicians about his desire to support the populist right across Europe: “I absolutely want to empower other conservatives throughout Europe, other leaders. I think there is a groundswell of conservative policies that are taking hold because of the failed policies of the left.” In his view, the avatars of a new Europe are figures such as the young prime minister of Austria Sebastian Kurz, who ran on a strongly anti-immigrant platform.

An actual sinkhole has developed on the north lawn of the White House. It might serve as a good metaphor for the state of the Trump presidency, which is being engulfed by the very Washington swamp that it once vowed to eradicate. The latest revelation comes courtesy of the BBC’s indefatigable Paul Wood, who reports today on a corrupt bargain that apparently took place between the White House and Ukraine. It seems that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who bet on the wrong horse during the 2016 campaign by releasing some information about the sordid financial machinations of Donald Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort to the New York Times in August 2016, was desperate to make amends.  He wanted to butter up Trump.

Maybe President Trump has finally given up on his cherished dream of Vladimir Putin as his new best friend. It seems that Kim Jong-un is supplanting him in his affections. Even as Trump tries to up the ante with Iran, his top officials are playing kissy-face with North Korea. Fears are swirling in Washington that in his desperation for a grand bargain, Trump may end up following a policy of appeasement toward the North with Singapore as the new Munich. It may not be long before Trump returns from Singapore brandishing a piece of paper, or at least issues a tweet, declaring “peace for our time.

On June 12 Donald Trump will meet Kim Jong-un in Singapore. Trump is ebullient. “World Peace” is what he will seek, according his Twitter account. Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is sounding a more cautious note: “We hope this meeting will advance prospects for peace in the Korean Peninsula." Trump’s euphoric tone is more reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson than the America First rodomontade that he was peddling to his followers during the 2016 campaign. It’s prompting a volte-face in Washington, not the first Trump has created. Hawks are becoming doves and doves hawks. Conservatives are talking peace, love and understanding. Liberals are fretting that Trump will give away the store to the North.

So aides to Donald Trump, the Observer reports, retained an Israeli intelligence organization to launch a 'dirty ops' campaign against two former national security officials in the Obama administration, Colin Kahl and Ben Rhodes. Both happen to have been involved in the negotiations about the Iran deal and the idea seems to have been to find information that could be used to smear their reputations. On Twitter today, Kahl freely confessed to many sins, including selling off his valuable X-Men comic book collection as a lad to help finance a trip to debate camp. It remains to be seen whether Rhodes, too, will fess up to any such grave transgressions dating back to his childhood.

So it’s true. Donald Trump is going bonkers. This morning he used the British term in a tweet slamming “phony Witch Hunts” and lauding the “great Energy and unending Stamina” of the White House.There is plenty to arouse Trump’s ire. Yesterday the press that Trump loves to decry revealed that White House chief of staff John Kelly regards the president as an “idiot” who persuaded Trump last fall not to withdraw American troops unilaterally from South Korea, a move that would essentially have handed it over to the North on a silver platter.The last person to talk about Trump like that was former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson whom Trump sacked on Twitter. It’s only a matter of time before Kelly becomes Tillersoned.

The Trump administration may be heading into an infinity war. Europe is gearing up to retaliate against American on the trade front. China is indicating that it will refuse to negotiate on several key Trump trade demands. The Iran deal may be ripped up on May 12. And national security adviser John Bolton seems intent on sabotaging any negotiations with North Korea, something he did in the George W. Bush administration when he helped to terminate the 1994 nuclear deal that the Clinton administration had negotiated with the North.This past weekend, Bolton proclaimed that North Korea should follow the precedent of Libya when it comes to denuclearization.

Debbie Lesko, a former Arizona state lawmaker, was jubilant over her victory for a seat in Congress last night against Hiral Tipirneni, a physician who was never given much of a chance to win. But Lesko’s narrow tally—52.9 per cent to 47.1 per cent—in a staunchly conservative district is why Republican strategists are not. Donald Trump won the district by 21 percentage points in 2016, but his widespread unpopularity now looms large over congressional races. Republican candidates are between the devil and the deep blue sea. Distance themselves from Trump and the base revolts. Tie themselves closely to the old boy and independent voters find them revolting. How to propitiate angry voters? A more popular Trump would have a tonic effect on the party.