Here’s one way to make America great again.
In the days ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s first visit to the White House during the Trump presidency, in March 2017, [National Security Council] career staffers were told the president wanted to tell Merkel that other NATO countries owed the U.S. money. Could they prepare a report on the topic? Career NSC staffers got to work and returned with the basics: that NATO countries don’t owe the United States money because that’s not how the military alliance works; that every NATO country is supposed to spend at least 2 percent of its GDP on defense, and that while many had fallen short of that commitment, others met it or were on track to do so. In short, no one “owed” the United States anything.
NSC career staffers presented this information to a senior administration official in the West Wing. According to one of them, the official replied: “The president is going to say it anyway, so we need to help him. I mean, it’s not a legal document.”
The career staffers were flummoxed.
“It was the weird disregard for facts that made it offensive,” one of the then-staffers said. “They said, ‘Never mind all that, he’s going to do it anyway so give us stuff that helps the case.’ It was frightening, in a way.” The then-staffer said he refused to contribute further: “I didn’t want to lie.
How would you go about giving the president “stuff” that would help him make the case to Angela Merkel that NATO countries owe the United States money when they do not, in fact, own the United States any money?
If the president is just going to say something without any regard for the facts, then why even bother to manufacture facts? And if the administration is just going to make stuff up, that’s hardly going to impress Merkel who will be just as flummoxed as the career staffers. Finally, if you’re just going to lie, then why ask the National Security Council to come up with your lies? Why not just ask the Sean Hannity’s staff for some particularly pungent line of bullshit that he’s confident will smell like roses to the dunces who watch his show?
It’s telling that Trump’s staffers aren’t willing to take a stand and tell him that he’s off his rocker. They go around asking experts and intellectuals to help them manage his ignorance and buffoonery.
This incident took place less than two months into Trump’s presidency but nothing has improved in the interim. For a while, there was the semblance of a rationale process when H.R. McMaster was the National Security Advisor, but even that is easy to exaggerate.
Under John Bolton’s management, things are back to total chaos.
So Trump apparently repeated his attacks on NATO during the campaign enough times, heard the chants back from his followers enough times that he not only came to believe this dangerous lie, but felt that if he didn’t stick to the story, perhaps the world would realize that he was indeed a house of cards, that he knew nothing beyond the stories he’d been fed.
It’s a viscous circle, this Trumpian house of cards, one conspiracy demands another to prop it up and then it demands 2 more and then…
It’s also important that the NATO experience wasn’t alone, there were likely hundreds happening simultaneously and likewise those same senior officials insisted on propping up Trump rather than taking a stand in the peoples’ House for the truth.
And now, 2+ years later Trump believes what he believes and ‘we’re all going to die’.
Why not just ask the Sean Hannity’s staff for some particularly pungent line of bullshit? Well, he hired Bill Shine…
“he’s going to do it anyway so give us stuff that helps the case…” Just like the run-up to the Iraq war.
Trump always tries to get a reputable source to justify his actions “I’m just telling you what the NSC says, OK?”
When he can’t reference someone else, it’s back to “Many people say….”
There was a protester during the 2016 campaign who went around to Trump rallies with a megaphone and would chant along with the Trumpites, but with a difference: “Make America White Again.” Some of them tried to argue with him, but a lot of them just laughed. They’d been busted. They can’t really argue that isn’t what they want.
So, Making America Great was never about anything except punching hippies and being cruel to immigrants and their families. Because they hate them.
So, Trump is a complete moron who is screwing everything up? He’s attacking their enemies. Why would they care? The fact that he’s an incompetent moron and that causes the Libtards’ heads to explode is just gravy.
“Take our country back” = Make America Great (White) Again
Sarah Palin was one of the opening acts back in 2008. Attracted the same goons who follow Individual-1 now.
. . . Now gimme the damn ballot.”
Forget who I’m quoting (or maybe closely paraphrasing?) there. DXM, maybe?
“Under John Bolton’s management, things are back to total chaos.”
Either Bolton signed off on this in the vein of “giving him stuff he could use” to lap Kim’s balls, to satisfy Trump’s inexplicable penchant to be liked by bad people who have no qualms on abusing him too (which could be the story of his life). Or, as is just as credible, Bolton is floating this in all honesty, since he’s as damn near as reality challenged as Trump is. When it comes to these “movement conservatives” like Bolton, there is no rational foreign policy that is not Trumped by whatever fantasy that can be served up as red meat to feed the rabid hate-loving base that put their Idiot King in office.
But imagine Merkel or some other leader of one of our allies listening to Trump, as they have, spout an outrageous falsehood and then looking over and seeing US foreign policy or military professionals who they know, knows better, nodding in agreement to the tune The Moron is singing. They can only conclude, that the US, as an ally and reliable partner is “gone,” kind of like in the same way someone might observe someone in the grips of Alzheimer’s and realize this is not the same person.
Unfortunately like Alzheimer’s, the US may not be able to come back from the effects of this after Trump is gone because, world leaders know our “democracy” well enough to know that Trump is an ugly symptom of a larger problem of a not too rational electorate that put him in office in the first place. Who’s to say “we” won’t do it again?
I do wonder what Bolsonaro or the Lega Nord guys in Italy think of Trump since they agree with his thrust but are notably less stupid.
I do wonder what Bolsonaro or the Lega Nord guys in Italy think of Trump since they agree with his thrust but are notably less stupid.
How is Bolsonaro less stupid? He’s just as stupid and corrupt as Trump is. Do you know what Bolsonaro has said about global warming? Just to give one example.
A classic.
John Bolton is like Cheney a soulless, conscienceless, violence-enabling-the-Empire loving piece of shit.
If anything he prefers the chaos that makes his goals of invading Iran a more likely outcome.
All the fascists, Trump, Cheney. Putin, Netanyahu, MBS, the guy in Hungary, prefer chaos because it creates confusion and cover for them to do their nasty shit. While all the other people are reacting (see also Karl Rove, baby fascist) they are creating their own reality and never lose site of their goal. It is not hard for them to ignore the noise and other people’s pain because the literally do not have a single ounce of empathy or caring in their being.
Ever since the US backed out of the Iran deal, our European allies have been worried about the impact of secondary sanctions on companies and individuals that do business in Iran. They’ve since established a payment mechanism to bypass US sanctions and allow humanitarian assistance (food, medicine, and medical devices) to flow to Iran. Don’t be fooled by the limited nature of the program: in the long run, it’s likely that this channel will expand beyond humanitarian aid.
The dirty secret about US sanctions is that they’re most effective if our European allies are on board. I highly doubt that the European allies will wait until 2020- they’re operating under the assumption that the USA can’t be trust now, and they’re not wrong to do so. In the long run, the United States will have a sharply reduced ability to shape the geopolitical climate.
Thats probably for the best considering how shitty things are.
Because the NSC had credibility and Trump doesn’t. He wanted to steal their legitimacy to advance his cause and didn’t care that he would end up destroying it in the long run.
I’ll point out he successfully used the same strategy to fire Jim Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok among others, and he tried the same with his fearmongering on the caravan, although his attempts are typically so cartoonishly evil that everyone can see right through him.
Still manages to corrupt institutions and cause real damage, though.