On Tuesday, I noted the oddity of a sitting president of the United States being contradicted on nearly every area of national security by his own intelligence community. I was responding to the testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee of Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA director Gina Haspel, and FBI director Christopher Wray, each of whom provided assessments diametrically opposed to Donald Trump’s own expressed opinions on Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria, ISIS, the southern border and the threat of climate change.
On Wednesday, the president lashed out against their testimony, stating “they are wrong,” calling them “extremely passive and naive,” and suggesting “perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!”
The top Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees were predictably unimpressed.
Trump drew rebukes for his tweets from Democrats, including Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
“It is a credit to our intelligence agencies that they continue to provide rigorous and realistic analyses of the threats we face,” Schiff said in a statement. “It’s deeply dangerous that the White House isn’t listening.”
Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, also weighed in.
“The President has a dangerous habit of undermining the intelligence community to fit his alternate reality,” Warner said in a tweet. “People risk their lives for the intelligence he just tosses aside on Twitter.”
But we really shouldn’t see this as a partisan concern. At the New York Times, Peter Baker reports on a growing chorus of Republican critics of Trump’s foreign policy.
They think pulling out of Syria and Afghanistan would be a debacle. They think North Korea cannot be trusted. They think the Islamic State is still a threat to America. They think Russia is bad and NATO is good.
The trouble is their president does not agree.
More than two years into his administration, the disconnect between President Trump and the Republican establishment on foreign policy has rarely been as stark. In recent days, the president’s own advisers and allies have been pushing back, challenging his view of the world and his prescription for its problems.
The growing discontent among Republican national security hawks was most evident on Tuesday when Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader and perhaps Mr. Trump’s most important partner in Congress, effectively rebuked the president by introducing a measure denouncing “a precipitous withdrawal” of American troops from Syria and Afghanistan.
There are partisan differences on most foreign policy issues, and there is rarely unanimity within either party. We’re getting close to unanimity on some things though, like skepticism about North Korea’s good intentions, the inadvisability of a hasty and unplanned pullout of Syria, the nefarious activities of Vladimir Putin, and the importance of NATO. Trump is isolated on these issues, and it’s putting stress on the Republicans.
Watching him discredit the testimony of his own administration’s foreign policy and national security experts isn’t going to make them feel any better about his continued presidency.
It may be putting stress on Яepugnicans, they may not like it, but that doesn’t seem to prevent them from pulling out all the stops to keep Damn Old Turp in office. Barr, whom they’re about to approve, promises in effect to keep any incriminating information about Old Damn Runt from the public, including its representatives in Congress; because you can’t indict a sitting president, so he sez, you can’t release any information that might potentially lead to an indictment. It’s the job of Congress to impeach, so he sez, knowing full well that DOJ has exclusive access to certain kinds of information critical to an impeachment process that he will likely suppress. (The sophistry is dignified by the sterile language “theory of the unitary executive”; what is actually meant is “theory of the unitary Яepugnican executive.”) It seems obvious that the Яepugnicans are hoping to run out the clock on this “presidency,” no?
I imagine congressional Яepugnicans are eager to stymie investigations also because of what might be turned up about many of them–where their money is coming from, for instance.
Sorry–that should be Old Damp Runt. (Anagrams are especially unforgiving when it comes to typos.)
Barr has said that he will accept Mueller’s report and then issue his own summary, which, I agree, is likely to be sanitized of anything detrimental to Trump and his family.
However, House Democrats have said they will sub poena the full report. Should the courts rule against the HOR (and not sure the courts can actually do this), the Democrats have promised to ask Mueller to appear before one of the committees, probably the Judiciary Committee and describe in detail what’s in his report. Hopefully, this would be a public hearing.
The Mueller Report will supply the evidentiary basis for Trump’s impeachment.
Quite so. I don’t care how the Republicans feel about Individual One’s continued presidency, I care what they plan to do about it, which is everything they can to enable it.
You must read this. It is not just the donald who has a poor grip on reality.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-usa-trade-china-soymeal-insight/inside-chinas-strategy-in-the-soy
bean-trade-war-idUSKCN1OQ0D2
Can you imagine (2 years ago) the donald and Xi having a conversation at Mar a Lago. Xi tells the donald his plan for soy beans. The donald does not understand what Xi is talking about so he was unable to pass the info on. That must be the reason we currently have close to 30 million tons of soy in storage waiting for the donald to complete a deal that does not exist.
Pretty sure those soybeans have been sold to Brazil at a steep discount so that Brazil can sell its soybean crops at a premium to China.
But…but…but…
They’re not his experts.
They are…quite demonstrably…his enemies!!!
A good grifter recognizes his enemies in 2 basic ways.
They are either:
1-Cops of some sort.
and/or
2-Competing grifters.
With a possible #3:
3-People who are neither grifters nor cops, but are trying to warn possible fellow marks about the ongoing grift.
Numbers 1 + 2.
Bet on it.
AG
P.S. The above is not meant to excuse Trump. I just want to set the record straight here so us #3-ers actually have at least a glimpse of what is really going on.
It’s the Deep State Gang vs. the Trumpist Gang…w/likely help on the Trumpists’s side from the Russian Gang or else he wouldn’t have gotten this far.
Bet on that as well.