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Posts published in “Trump”

Trump 57: Spoils

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One of Trump's throwaway lines, one he's used with some regularity is about how if those Middle Easterners don't settle down and behave themselves, he'd order the seizure of "the oil" in various countries in that area.

For more than a year, he's talked about seizing the oil in places like Iraq, Iran and Libya. Those are three he's named specifically; presumably, if you asked, he'd tack others onto the list.

It's been reported from time to time, yes, but largely glossed over - maybe because the boast/threat sounds so quintessentially Trummpian. But there's no particular reason to think that he doesn't mean it, that if he were in the White House, that he simply would forget about it.

So what are the implications of seizing, or trying to seize, the oil of one or more countries in the Middle East?

Writer Bruce Riedel, at the Daily Beast, did give it some thought, and concluded, "Taking the oil is the most dangerous and irresponsible of all of the Republican nominee’s policy proposals. . . . If you want permanent war in the Middle East and a titanic clash of cultures between Islam and America, it’s your best bet."

Riedel addressed only Iraq specifically, but the scenario in Iran or even Libya would be no more promising. (Trump to Fox News on Libyan oil: “I would go in and take the oil — I would just go in and take the oil. We don’t know who the rebels are, we hear they come from Iran, we hear they’re influenced by Iran or al-Qaeda, and, frankly I would go in, I would take the oil — and stop this baby stuff. . . . I’m only interested in Libya if we take the oil. If we don’t take the oil, I’m not interested.”)

In Iraq, substantial oil supplies are spread across the country, much of which has at the least security issues, but the largest concentration is in the south near the Basra area. Getting the oil out would involve securing extraction facilities over a large area, and over many years - as any Texas oilman can tell you, a large supply doesn't all pump itself out of the ground in a week or two. That would mean a massive deployment of American military, and associated contractors.

Riedel said that "Since Basra province has over 2.5 million people, almost all Shia Arabs, their resistance alone would be challenging. But they would not be alone. The Shia- dominated government in Baghdad would support its citizens, adding to the struggle. It will turn attention away from fighting for Mosul, and focus on recovering Basra. It will be a grueling war."

Nor is that all, since the Basra area is next door to Iran, which also would back the rebellion, whether openly or not.

Do you suppose Trump actually knows any of this?

If Trump had gotten into the mire this far, he'd probably be tempted - in good business fashion - to get improved return on investment if he could. That would mean taking over the large oil fields in Kuwait. The good news there would be that we already have significant forces in Kuwait, and it's a friendly country. The bad news is that Kuwait's three million people would be friendly no longer, and the war zone would simply have increased. The business-minded solution to that? Take over more oil fields, in the Gulf and in Saudi Arabia, giving the United States overwhelmingly control of the oil system, but at an immense military cost.

And that would be only the beginning: "No Muslim state would host American troops or cooperate with counter-terrorist operations. Friendly Arab governments like Jordan would have to break ties with Washington or face massive unrest. Americans traveling in the Islamic world from Morocco to Indonesia would be at risk. Sunnis and Shia alike would stalk Americans. None of our Western allies would support taking the oil. (Canada would have to wonder if Alberta is next.) The Europeans would see such a naked land grab as a return to the era of Hitler and Stalin. Russia, on the other hand, would claim its seizure of Crimea was post facto legitimized."

Does Trump pause, even for a couple of seconds, to think through this garbage before he spews it forth? Or is that too much to ask from this famously attention-disabled candidate for the presidency? - rs

Trump 58: Run for the border

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Just because it was one of the very first among the outrageous things Donald Trump has said since declaring for president, his comments about illegal border-crossers from the south seem sometimes to have been forgotten. They should not be.

Apparently assuming that all the incomers are Mexican (many come from elsewhere south of the border), Trump said on the day he announced his candidacy, "When Mexico sends its people ... they're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."

You could say that Trump was referring only to the people who crossed the border, not Mexicans generally. But Trump has done little to make that distinction, or the fact that illegal arrivers tend, once here, to be more law abiding than other residents. (It makes only sense that they would go further out of their way to avoid contact with officials.)

But a statement he made later covered all Mexicans - and who knows who else? - with its reasoning. Trump has a court case before U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a judge sitting in California, a native of Indiana, whose family has roots in Mexico in earlier generations. Trump said he was biased against him because of that family background, and Trump's positions in the campaign: "Let me just tell you, I have had horrible rulings. I’ve been treated very unfairly by this judge. Now, this judge is of Mexican heritage. I'm building a wall, OK? I'm building a wall."

Still later in the campaign, Trump took a one-afternoon jaunt to Mexico City to have a photo op and a brief discussion with the Mexican president. Mexican politics have been in uproar since - all but calling on the president to resign - and Trump had to admit that, given the opportunity to call on Mexico to pay for the fantastical well, he had taken a powder.

Never would a president take office with relations with our southern neighbor more - and unavoidably - in such awful shape. - rs

Trump 59: The advisory corps

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No president can walk into office knowing everything of importance to the decisions that have to be made. Even after four or eight years, albeit better educated than at the beginning, a president still needs good advisors. Even if the advice isn't always taken - and a good president is neither bound by nor dismissive of advice from the specialists in everything from drone warfare in Yemen to medical care in rural counties - that advice is important. A good support staff is nearly as important as a good president.

You might be inclined to dismiss that a little more in the case of Donald Trump, who famously has pronounced himself to have "a good brain" and declared himself his own best advisor. There's the feeling that he may, in the end, listen to no one but himself.

In this case, that might be as well, since his gaggle of campaign operatives is the weakest in the last few generations.

Ordinarily, in both parties, you don't reach the level of working upper operational or advisory levels of a major presidential campaign without becoming one of the best in the country at that kind of work. Going back at least a couple of generations, nominees for both political parties have brought in top-flight help to run the campaigns and provide advice. That core of support often carries over into the White House; many White House staffers in recent years, again in both parties, have graduated to there from campaign jobs (much as the television series The West Wing depicted).

That's the case with the Hillary Clinton campaign, a corps with deep political and policy experience in recent Democratic campaigns. Most of the Republican candidates for president probably would have had a counterpart in place now, but the actual nominee, Donald Trump, from the beginning has scoffed at the idea of running an actual campaign organization. What do you need that for if you have rallies and free media?

Actually, you need a substantial organization for many things, but one of those, if you do manage to win the election, is to help provide a staff core for the next administration.

So what does Trump have along those lines?

The closest he has had to a conventional experienced campaign staffer was former manager Paul Manafort, who wound up being a political liability over his connections with Russia and being on the outs with others in the campaign. He was far from an optimal choice - his direct experience in American presidential politics is more than a generation in the past - but at least he had some idea of what the norms were.

Now the closest to that mark is his titular campaign manager but in effect spokesman, Kellyanne Conway, who does have useful experience as a pollster but not in any of the other jobs she seems to have been asked to do. The CEO of the campaign, Steve Bannon, has no campaign or governmental experience of any kind - he's been a stirrer of controversy and little more. And a variety of people hanging around the campaign and evidently getting Trump's ear more than many of the staffers do are no more helpful. (A few mid-level staffers do have some significant Republican Party political experience, but they seem not to be exerting major roles in the campaign.

The Breitbart web organization last year quoted Trump on the subject of where he got his advice on military action: "I watch the shows."

If his campaign careens now, you could expect a Trump White House would do the same. Or worse.

Trump 60: This is loyalty?

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A five-year-old does this when he gobbles a slice of cake before dinnertime: He tries to frantically excuse his way out of it. Blame it on someone else, if he can.

In this latest Donald Trump case, of course, the stakes are a lot higher, even if the response is essentially the same. Maybe that's partly because Trump didn't even realize what the stakes were.

What he did was to talk to interviewer Larry King for about 10 minutes. Nothing unusual about that; he's done it many times. This time, however, King's program is on RT America - the Russian television network, essentially under the Kremlin's direct control. (King's production company said that the program was produced independently, but RT is licensed to use it.)

During the show, he reiterated several of his greatest hits, including his effusive praise for Russian strongman Vladmir Putin. On whose network, as a matter of practice, he was speaking. During his minutes on RT, Trump did his typical blast at the American media and said this about the United States government: “Hillary Clinton with her policies and Barack Obama — you know, look, we should have never gone into Iraq. Period. But once we went in, Larry, we shouldn’t have gotten out the way we got out. And the way they got out really caused ISIS, if you think about it. We got out in such a horrible, foolish fashion, instead of leaving some troops behind.”

Trump tried to squirm out from underneath the mess by saying he thought King would use the interview only for a podcast. That one doesn't come close to passing the smell test.

The whole performance - in fact, Trump's whole buddying-up with Putin and Russia - might put some conservatives in a mind to recall protesters during the Vietnam conflict (Jane Fonda likely most prominent among them) who were bitterly criticized for speaking against their home country while speaking on the local turf of an adversary.

Apply whatever further descriptive word you choose for that, at least in Trump's case where no claim was even attempted toward a moral high ground. But whatever word you choose isn't going to be pretty. - rs

Trump 61: Chickenhawk-in-chief

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To say that Donald Trump has a bias for war doesn't begin to cover it.

You can see as much by simply watching his demeanor at his rallies and elsewhere: He comes off as highly warlike. But unlike most recent presidents, who leavened war talk with an undergirding of seriousness and maybe a streak of mournfulness at having to take this step . . . Trump sounds like he'd simply be having great fun.

On the August 10 Morning Joe program, he declared, "I am the most militaristic person there is”. Unlike so many other Trump statements, there's no good reason to doubt this one.

He just hasn't decided that country he wants to invade first.

Almost three decades ago, on a 1987 edition of Meet the Press (and what the hell was he doing on that show back then?), he said that if someone from Iran fired a shot toward an American - even by accident - that the United States should invade that country, steal its oil (he didn't say how that impossible task might be accomplished) and then “let them have the rest” of the country.

In November 2015, he said in Iowa, “I love war. . . I’m good at war. I’ve had a lot of wars of my own. I’m really good at war. I love war in a certain way, but only when we win.” Was he thinking here about real-world combat, where lives are lost and shattered and the consequences for thousands or millions of people can be drastic . . . or maybe the board game Risk. Or does he know the difference?

Put that comment in among the most drastic jaw-droppers Trump has yet uttered. But again, there's no good reason to disbelieve what he so plainly so.

Alongside a few more from the September 7 "commander in chief" forum, where he declared the current U.S. military, under President Barack Obama, a disaster. He particularly blasted the American effort against ISIS. Evidently he was unaware of the terror-nation's drastic losses of territory, personnel, financial and other resources over the last year.

The generals have been terrible, he said, but in his administration, “they’d probably be different generals, to be honest with you.” (Chosen how?)

There's been some concern on the left in this campaign that Democrat Hillary Clinton might be a little too willing to send troops into harms way. That concern, though, even if somewhat valid, has to melt under the strong likelihood that Trump, seeing a military not busy fighting enough people to keep it occupies, would give it more work to do.

After the longest stretch in our history of active warfare, the United States needs to take a break from military activism that isn't clearly and absolutely necessary, or undertaken as a defensive measure. Clinton at least seems to have some understanding of that. Trump seems only to understand he might be able to get his hands on an exciting new plaything. - rs

Trump 62: The meaning of it all

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We don't expect our presidents to be philosophers of the cosmos.

But, really.

Asked by a Christian Broadcasting Network correspondent the question, "Who is God to you?", the self-proclaimed Christian had this to say.

“Well I say God is the ultimate. You know you look at this? Here we are on the Pacific Ocean. How did I ever own this? I bought it 15 years ago. I made one of the great deals they say ever. I have no more mortgage on it as I will certify and represent to you. And I was able to buy this and make a great deal. That’s what I want to do for the country. Make great deals. We have to, we have to bring it back, but God is the ultimate. I mean God created this (points to his golf course and nature surrounding it), and here’s the Pacific Ocean right behind us. So nobody, no thing, no there’s nothing like God.”

Can Donald Trump go more than 12 seconds without circling back and referring to himself? Does his ability to contemplate anything other than himself last longer than that?

A little more reflectiveness would be good in a president.

Or, as a writer on Daily Kos put it:

What does God mean to you, little Billy? God means beachfront property at low, low prices, ma. God is an imported gardener you never have to pay. God is the ultimate banker, and I cheated him outta some prime land on this one, no mortgage or anything. God is a magic fish, and I caught him fair and square.

This man is a narcissist so narcissistic that we may have to retire the term narcissistic and instead rename it in honor of the man. Narcissus had nothing on this blowhard.

-rs

Trump 63: Higher, lower levels of protection

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Donald Trump is running as the (would-be) president who will protect all of the rest of us. At least taken to reasonable levels, that's a fair thing for a candidate to proclaim as a goal.

In Trump's case, however, his history proclaims that he will put protection of himself above protection of the rest of us, should there be a conflict. Or even if there isn't.

There's plenty in Trump's business practices to show much greater concern, and higher levels of care, in protecting himself (and his business, and his money) compared to other people. A measure of self-protection is, of course, no horrible thing, as long as the cost is not too high. In Trump's case, it has too often meant throwing other people overboard.

It shows up in his campaign as well.

The New Yorker has reported that "He has denied that climate change is real, calling it pseudoscience and advancing a conspiracy theory that “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” But he has also filed a permit request to build a sea wall around one of his golf courses, in Ireland, in order to protect the property from global warming and its consequences. Which Trump is running for President?"

Same guy. - rs

Trump 64: An unmoored perspective

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Imagine a small boat, tethered to a dock. It also alongside other boats, similarly tethered, and all of them are linked in some common relationship.

Now image that small boat untethered, loosened, wandering around the ocean with not even a shoreline visible, with no frame of reference at all but . . . itself.

Now picture Donald Trump, candidate for the ultimate connected people - the single job that most directly affects other people - saying this:

“It is my personal Vietnam. I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

He said those words on a long-forgotten video, from a 1997 interview with radio jock Howard Stern, that resurfaced earlier this year on the web site Buzzfeed.

The first thing that might occur to many people is that no real great or brave soldier would ever speak of himself in that way. It is true that Trump wasn't specifically saying he was "a great and very brave soldier," merely comparing himself to one. But the facts on both ends of the comparison specifically bear reiteration.

Trump spent time in a military academy and graduated from it in the spring of 1964. Though he participated there without comment in military-type activities, when he enrolled in selective service (the draft) in June of that year, just as America's military was starting to gear up in Vietnam, he took and education deferment, to attend Fordham College. That was the first of four education deferments, and when that ran out after his graduation in 1968, he received a 1-Y medical deferment (over bone spurs in his heels).

He appears not to have been eager to make his way to Vietnam. Possibly the idea of being captured by the Viet Cong held little appeal, since he said of contemporaneous POW John McCain, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

So - that's the reality of Trump, the military and Vietnam. What was it he was referring to when comparing himself to "a great and very brave soldier"?

That, in his conversation with shock jock Stern, was about his years in the 70s when he was engaging in lots of sexual activity: “I’ve been so lucky in terms of that whole world. It is a dangerous world out there. It’s scary, like Vietnam. Sort of like the Vietnam-era . . . I feel like a great and very brave soldier.”

As a moral actor in American society, Donald Trump is completely unmoored. How else to explain this? - rs

Trump 65: Liar, liar

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Sometimes, lying can be a good thing. It can smooth social interactions. It can help with diplomacy. It is not always a terrible thing.

And, famously, it happens in politics; nearly all (or should we make that "all"?) major and successful politicians have at the least told the occasional white lie, and many have gone beyond that. Our greatest presidents have dissembled, to some degree or another – mostly not as usual, common practice, but effective political activity does sometimes rely on something other than brutal honesty from time to time. George Washington, for all that innocent talk about the cherry tree, was also a spymaster, a pretty good one too, and adept in the arts of deception.

Dissembling on occasion for a greater good is one thing. Lying as a matter of ordinary, standard practice is something else, and here statistics about Donald Trump jump out.

On the Q&A website Quora the question arose of why Trump is so often described as a liar. One answer cited Politifact, the "independent Pulitzer Prize wining website that evaluates the truthfulness of political statements. Look at how they rate the statements of Donald Trump. Over 70% of the time Trump’s statements are Mostly False, False, or Pants on Fire. If you include Half True it jumps to 86% of the time. Even if you (incorrectly) believe that Politifact is somehow biased, it is hard to conclude that Mr. Trump is not a habitual liar." Trump rates in a whole different environment from the other presidential candidates of both parties this year.

And that is the point. Another Quora writer noted this: "There was a great profile of Trump a while back by a tabloid reporter who was assigned to follow him. The guy said that he expected covering Trump to be pretty easy, but it turned out to be hard because no matter what story he was writing, most of what Trump told him wouldn’t turn out to be true. Trump lied about who he was dating, about the status of business deals, about anything at all."

In that article, reporter Susan Mulcahy recalled, "It should be simple to write about publicity hounds, and often it is, because they’ll do anything to earn the attention they crave. Trump had a different way of doing things. He wanted attention, but he could not control his pathological lying. Which made him, as story subjects go, a lot of work. Every statement he uttered required more than the usual amount of fact-checking. If Trump said, “Good morning,” you could be pretty sure it was five o’clock in the afternoon."

Say what you will about lying politicians: This is not normal.

PoliticsUSA reported in one headline, "Donald Told No Less Than 21 Fact Checked Proven Lies During His Acceptance Speech."

Around the end of march DailyWire compiled a list of 101 lies he had told.

That list, of course, was woefully incomplete even at the time and wildly out of date now, which must be why the New Yorker has started a new and unusual online series specifically on the lies of Donald Trump.

"Donald Trump, the Republican nominee for President, does not so much struggle with the truth as strangle it altogether. He lies to avoid. He lies to inflame. He lies to promote and to preen. Sometimes he seems to lie just for the hell of it. He traffics in conspiracy theories that he cannot possibly believe and in grotesque promises that he cannot possibly fulfill. When found out, he changes the subject—or lies larger," writer David Remnick said.

He seems not even to live in the same world the rest of us do. - rs