Tag: Trump

Henry Farrell explains why Trump’s exciting new plan to team up with Russia to battle The Cyber is not all that practical.

First he points out that some co-operation even with rivals can work, as an Obama agreement with China has largely worked.

But.

As Trump has described his discussions with Putin, both want something much more far-reaching than the deal that Obama reached with China. Instead of setting up dialogue, Trump wants to engage in true cooperation. He wants to set up a joint “unit” that would handle election security issues so as to prevent hacking. This unit would, furthermore, be “impenetrable.”

It’s not hugely difficult to spot the flaw in that plan.

If the proposed cybersecurity unit were to work effectively, the United States would need to share extensive information with Russia on how U.S. officials defend elections against foreign tampering. The problem is, however, that information that is valuable for defending U.S. systems is, almost by definition, information that is valuable for attacking them, too. This is one reason U.S. officials have not previously proposed any far-reaching arrangement with Russia on cybersecurity. Providing such information would almost certainly give the Russians a map of vulnerabilities and insecurities in the system that they could then exploit for their own purposes.

It would not only provide the fox with a map of the henhouse, but give him the security code, the backdoor key, and a wheelbarrow to make off with the carcasses. U.S. officials have determined that Russian hackers have probed U.S. election systems, presumably to discover vulnerabilities that they could exploit. Although there is no evidence that Russia actually manipulated machines to alter the vote in the 2016 election, there is excellent reason to believe that Russia has carefully considered the pros and cons of direct intervention, as well as the hacking and leaking that it did engage in.

And we don’t actually want to help them do that even more.

But hey, look at it from Trump’s point of view. His ratings are in the toilet, so he’ll need extra help if he runs in 2020 (frankly I’m hoping he’ll be removed long before then). Maybe if he gives the Russians the security code and the key they’ll help him get re-elected.

Furthermore, when Trump says that this unit would be “impenetrable,” he implies that Russia and the United States would cooperate on making it secure against outside hacking by third parties. Again, such cooperation is wildly unlikely to work well. To make it work, the United States would have to share sensitive methods with Russia, as well as vice versa. Neither side is going to want to do this, because again it would provide potential adversaries with a deep understanding of protective measures, which might allow those adversaries to penetrate them.

In short, the kind of cooperation that Trump is proposing would be very hard to accomplish between close allies with deeply shared security interests (the United States shares a lot of secrets with select allies — but it does not share everything, for the same reasons that they do not share their deepest defensive secrets with the United States). It is more or less impossible to carry off with a state that not only is often an adversary but has recently demonstrated its desire to hack U.S. elections, if only it could get away with it.

Wouldn’t you think Trump could have figured this out for himself? Even as clouded and confused as he is?

Peter Beinart decodes Trump’s Warsaw speech.

In his speech in Poland on Thursday, Donald Trump referred 10 times to “the West” and five times to “our civilization.” His white nationalist supporters will understand exactly what he means. It’s important that other Americans do, too.

The West is not a geographic term. Poland is further east than Morocco. France is further east than Haiti. Australia is further east than Egypt. Yet Poland, France, and Australia are all considered part of “The West.” Morocco, Haiti, and Egypt are not.

Poland is not always considered part of “the West,” I think. It’s considered liminal, semi-Western, Westernish. But for Trump? That’s another matter.

The West is not an ideological or economic term either. India is the world’s largest democracy. Japan is among its most economically advanced nations. No one considers them part of the West.

Well, again – sometimes the word is used to mean mostly economically advanced, and it does include Japan. It’s become a very baggy word that way.

But Beinart’s basic point is that Trump wasn’t using it that way.

The West is a racial and religious term. To be considered Western, a country must be largely Christian (preferably Protestant or Catholic) and largely white. Where there is ambiguity about a country’s “Westernness,” it’s because there is ambiguity about, or tension between, these two characteristics. Is Latin America Western? Maybe. Most of its people are Christian, but by U.S. standards, they’re not clearly white. Are Albania and Bosnia Western? Maybe. By American standards, their people are white. But they are also mostly Muslim.

“Preferably Catholic” is doubtful too. Italy, Portugal and Spain (and of course Poland) used to be considered almost third world, and certainly not in the same league as the Protestant countries.

Beinart says usage changed when the Cold War ended; that US presidents stopped identifying with “the West” and instead talked about universal values.

Every president from George H.W. Bush to Barack Obama emphasized the portability of America’s political and economic principles. The whole point was that democracy and capitalism were not uniquely “Western.” They were not the property of any particular religion or race but the universal aspiration of humankind.

To grasp how different that rhetoric was from Trump’s, look at how the last Republican President, George W. Bush, spoke when he visited Poland. In his first presidential visit, in 2001, Bush never referred to “the West.” He did tell Poles that “We share a civilization.” But in the next sentence he insisted that “Its values are universal.” Because they are, he declared, “our trans-Atlantic community must have priorities beyond the consolidation of European peace. We must bring peace and health to Africa. … We must work toward a world that trades in freedom … a world of cooperation to enhance prosperity, protect the environment, and lift the quality of life for all.”

…

Bush’s vision echoed Francis Fukuyama’s. America and Europe may have been further along the road to prosperity, liberty, capitalism, and peace than other parts of the world, but all countries could follow their path. And the more each did, the more America and Europe would benefit. In deeply Catholic Poland, Bush sprinkled his speeches with religious references, but they were about Christianity as a universal creed, a moral imperative that knew no civilizational bounds. By contrast, when Trump warned Poles about forces “from the south or the east, that threaten … to erase the bonds of culture, faith, and tradition,” he was talking not about Christianity but about Christendom: a particular religious civilization that must protect itself from outsiders.

Or he was talking about an amalgam of Christendom and Enlightenmentdom and popular culture – he was talking about What We’re Used To as opposed to What’s Different. Along with race, of course. He was talking about his knee-jerk dislikes and his loathing of foreigners, especially brown foreigners.

The most shocking sentence in Trump’s speech—perhaps the most shocking sentence in any presidential speech delivered on foreign soil in my lifetime—was his claim that “The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” On its face, that’s absurd. Jihadist terrorists can kill people in the West, but unlike Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, they cannot topple even the weakest European government. Jihadists control no great armies. Their ideologies have limited appeal even among the Muslims they target with their propaganda. ISIS has all but lost Mosul and could lose Raqqa later this year.

Trump’s sentence only makes sense as a statement of racial and religious paranoia. The “south” and “east” only threaten the West’s “survival” if you see non-white, non-Christian immigrants as invaders. They only threaten the West’s “survival” if by “West” you mean white, Christian hegemony. A direct line connects Trump’s assault on Barack Obama’s citizenship to his speech in Poland. In Trump and Bannon’s view, America is at its core Western: meaning white and Christian (or at least Judeo-Christian). The implication is that anyone in the United States who is not white and Christian may not truly be American but rather than an imposter and a threat.

Pretty much. Anyone who is not like Trump and Trump’s family and acquaintances, basically. He likes his steak well done, he likes his chocolate cake, he likes to sleep in his own bed, and he likes to see people who look pretty much like the people he’s used to, and not scarily exotic and different. He’s a racist of the crudest kind, with no more deep thought to it than that.

America is racially, ethnically, and religious[ly] diverse. So when Trump says being Western is the essence of America’s identity, he’s in part defining America in opposition to some of its own people. He’s not speaking as the president of the entire United States. He’s speaking as the head of a tribe.

Of course. We’ve always known that. He’s speaking as the head of the tribe of rich white American guys, especially the ones who play golf.

Masha Gessen gives an unsurprising but deeply depressing summary of Trump’s date with Putin.

Mr. Putin has for years — 17 years, to be exact, for this is how long he has been in power — been clear about what he wanted from his relationship with the United States president: He wants to be treated as an equal partner on the world stage and not to be questioned about or pressed on the Russian government’s actions inside Russia or in what he considers his sphere of influence. Despite the friendly tenor of Mr. Putin’s relationship with George W. Bush and the offer of a “reset” made by Barack Obama’s administration, Mr. Putin never achieved his objective — until now. His fourth American president has given him exactly what he wanted: respect, camaraderie and freedom from criticism.

The one accomplishment of the meeting — a limited cease-fire in Syria— is exactly what Mr. Putin wanted. Not the cease-fire, that is: He wanted an acknowledgment that the United States and Russia are equal negotiating parties in the Syrian conflict. He spent years cajoling and then blackmailing the Obama administration into accepting Russia’s decisive role in the Middle East. Now, Mr. Trump has handed him much more than that. He has demonstrated that Russia and the United States can negotiate Syrian life and death without involving any Syrians.

Trump and Tillerson both act as if they had no idea of any of that.

Gessen lists rights violations and suppressions that appear to have gone unmentioned (appear because of course we don’t know what happened during those two hours the two bros spent together). It’s a crowded list.

Since at least the 1970s, Russian leaders and Soviet leaders before them had to face questions about political freedoms and human rights whenever they met with their American counterparts. The Trump administration has ended that tradition. In May, Mr. Tillerson, in a rare public statement on policy, said that American economic and strategic interests had to take precedence over human rights advancement. When he traveled to Moscow in April, he declined to meet with human rights activists, breaking with decades of tradition. It is no surprise that Mr. Trump broached none of these issues. No wonder Mr. Putin and his news media view the meeting as a triumph.

It’s as if the Mafia had taken over the Executive Branch.

Dan Rather yesterday:

The first thing President Trump did when meeting Russia’s Putin in a social gathering in Germany today was shake his hand warmly, then pat him fondly on the back. There it was and remains for the world to see.

All indications are that Putin helped orchestrate an attack on the sovereignty of the United States during the last U.S. election and has made similar moves in other Western counties, seeking to undermine confidence and stability in democratic institutions and ideals. Now he gets a pat on the back from the leader of the free world.

It was a disturbing if not sickening display. But it is theatrics for now. The real showdown comes when the two meet and talk formally.
Putin is widely known to respect strength and he has a nostril for weakness. He is an experienced and shrewd operator, while Mr. Trump has proven to be a bumbling novice who seeks affirmation. It is a recipe for disaster.

For all the damage Mr. Trump and his policies can do domestically, what is happening on the world stage – from dangerous posturing on North Korea, to risking a trade war with Europe, to pulling out of the climate pact – is truly frightening. The number one job of the President of the United States is to protect the safety and security of the nation. Mr. Trump is in far over his head, and the most dangerous thing is he doesn’t know it and his enablers who should know better don’t seem to care.

No one is arguing that seeking peace and lowering tensions with Russia isn’t necessary. But demonstrating strength and resolve, in ways small and large, is an imperative in trying to reach those ends. That and making it abundantly clear that mucking around in American elections will not be tolerated.

A pat on the back is not an encouraging way to start.

This is ridiculous and embarrassing. They all pretend it isn’t, but of course it is. Ivanka Trump sitting at the heads of state table at the G20 is ridiculous and embarrassing.

The first daughter was spotted slipping into Trump’s seat at a working session on “Partnership with Africa, Migration and Health,” putting her shoulder to shoulder with British Prime Minister Theresa May. Russian President Vladimir Putin was sitting one seat down.

This is an ex-model turned fashion marketer. Period. That’s her CV; she has no relevant experience or education or training whatsoever. It was nepotism that Robert Kennedy was his brother’s Attorney General, but at least he was an actual lawyer with government experience. Ivanka Trump is someone who sells dresses and shoes. She shouldn’t be there. She shouldn’t be in the administration, she shouldn’t be part of the US delegation, she most certainly should not be sitting at the table.

President's daughter filling in at this AM's #G20 – sitting next to Chinese President Xi (Photo/@LanaLukash) pic.twitter.com/kzl8eahobG

— West Wing Report (@WestWingReport) July 8, 2017

Trump’s presence at the high-level table was somewhat unusual, given that government ministers or senior officials are typically the ones called to stand in for heads of state at such sessions. But she is both the president’s daughter and an unpaid “assistant to the president” who focuses on issues of women’s empowerment and workplace development, and she maintains broad influence in the administration.

Yes, she’s the president’s daughter and an unpaid “assistant to the president” and that’s why she should be nowhere near this event.

It isn’t the first time Ivanka Trump has participated in high-level meetings at the summit. On Thursday night, she and her husband, Jared Kushner, another Trump adviser, joined the president at a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Kushner also participated in Trump’s bilateral meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto on Friday.

All bad. They’re both relatives, so should have been excluded from the outset. They’re both wholly unqualified, so should have been excluded from the outset. They both have massive conflicts of interest, so should have been excluded from the outset.

Earlier on Saturday, Ivanka Trump and her father participated in a World Bank session on women’s entrepreneurship, an issue that she has been particularly focused on.

She can be focused on it all she likes; that still doesn’t make her qualified to meddle in it at this level. She’s a former model who markets clothing.

Ivanka Trump has taken up a slate of issues since taking a role in the West Wing, including workforce training, paid family leave and women’s economic empowerment.

Stop it. That doesn’t mean anything. That just normalizes this grotesque farce. “Taking up” a slate of issues means nothing; she’s not qualified to have a role in the executive branch. She’s Trump’s pretty daughter; that’s not a qualification.

John Cassidy at the New Yorker wonders if the US got much out of Trump’s date with Putin.

Some White House officials were reportedly so worried about the Russian leader taking advantage of Trump that they wanted to expand the meeting to involve other aides, such as H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser, and Fiona Hill, a Russia expert on the National Security Council. Ultimately, though, all staffers were excluded from the meeting—there weren’t even any official note-takers in the room. (On social media, some of Trump’s critics lightheartedly noted that this would make it easier for the President to slip some state secrets to Putin, or perhaps promise him Alaska in exchange for a new hotel in Moscow.)

Lightheartedly? Because it was a joke? I don’t think it’s a joke; I think it’s the pathetic reality.

After the journalists left, the talks went on and on. As the world waited, it was tempting to speculate on why the confab was lasting so long. Putin chooses his words carefully; Trump, even now, is known to regale almost everyone he meets with details of his election victory. Maybe that was it.

No doubt that was it for ten minutes or so…but that still leaves 125 minutes for giving away Alaska and giggling over Putin’s success at hacking our election.

[W]hen Tillerson personally delivered the post-meeting readout to reporters, he said that Trump had started out “by raising the concern of the American people regarding Russian interference in the 2016 election. Tillerson went on: “The President pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement. President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past.” The Russian leader also asked the U.S. side to provide proof of Russian involvement, Tillerson said.

Since Trump said as recently as Thursday that “nobody really knows” who interfered in the election, he was hardly in a position to contradict Putin’s denials, even if he had wanted to. In any case, Tillerson made clear that really confronting Putin, or punishing him, was far from the President’s intention. “He pressed him and then felt like, at this point let’s talk about, how do we go forward?” Tillerson said. The two leaders then moved onto other issues, including Syria, for which they discussed a new ceasefire that is supposed to go into effect in the southeast of the country, Tillerson said. “There was a very clear positive chemistry between the two. . . . There was not a lot of re-litigating of the past,” he said.

Ah yes, “re-litigating the past,” i.e. making it clear to Putin that it’s not ok for him to hack US elections. (The US has hacked other people’s elections, and worse; it has supported coups to overthrow elected leaders and install dictators. We should be making major reparations. That doesn’t mean Putin is the guy to punish us.) It’s interesting that the “Secretary of State” i.e. former Exxon CEO in way over his head thinks it appropriate to belittle the idea of holding Putin accountable for hacking our election.

It should be noted that Lavrov, Tillerson’s opposite counterpart, put a very different spin on the meeting when he spoke to reporters. Lucian Kim, NPR’s Moscow correspondent, tweeted, “Lavrov: Trump mentioned that in US certain circles still inflate subject of Russian meddling in elections, even though they have no proof.” In another tweet, Kim said, “Lavrov: Trump said he heard Putin’s statements that Russia didn’t hack election and accepts them.”

Without access to a transcript, which seemingly doesn’t exist, it was hard to know what to make of these two accounts of the meeting, or whether they can be reconciled. But a few things did seem clear.

Putin had got what he wanted from the meeting: a commitment from the U.S. to move on from the election controversy and normalize relations. In addition to working toward a ceasefire in Syria, Lavrov said that the two sides had agreed to name new ambassadors, establish a working group on cybersecurity, and open a channel of discussion about Ukraine. Speaking to Russian reporters, Putin himself said, “We’ve had a very long discussion with the U.S. President. Many issues accrued, including Ukraine, Syria, and other problems, as well as some bilateral issues.” He didn’t mention anything about Trump bringing up Russian meddling.

Trump, for his part, could claim that he had raised the question of Russian interference, even if he did so only in the most perfunctory of fashions. But, in substantive terms, what had he gotten back from Putin? There was no word from Tillerson on any Russian concessions on North Korea, a pressing issue on which Moscow has sided with Beijing in opposing further U.N. sanctions. Indeed, Lavrov mentioned North Korea as one of two issues the two sides couldn’t agree on.

Trump got to meet his hero. End of story. Can we move on now?

Tillerson says Putin denies hacking the election.

Ok, that settles it, we can all relax now.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who attended the two-hour-and-fifteen-minute meeting, said it did not focus on the United States moving to punish Russia for the allegations that it hacked and leaked information that would help Trump win the election. Instead, Tillerson said the two leaders discussed “how do we move forward from what may be simply an in­trac­table disagreement at this point” regarding the election-hacking issue.

“The president pressed President Putin on more than one occasion regarding Russian involvement,” Tillerson said. “President Putin denied such involvement, as I think he has in the past.”

Tillerson said the White House was not “dismissing the issue” but wanted to focus on “how do we secure a commitment” that there will not be interference in the future.

Sure sure sure. Take Putin’s word for it and move on. Why not after all?

Tillerson would not say whether Trump flatly told Putin that Russia interfered in the election, saying instead: “He pressed him and then felt like at this point, how do we go forward?”

The meeting lasted much longer than expected. At one point, Trump’s wife entered the room to try to see if it could wrap up soon, but it continued much longer.

“We went another hour [after] she came in to see us, so clearly she failed,” Tillerson said.

What? Why the hell did she do that? Is that normal? What – “Honey, your lunch is getting cold, it’s time to come home now – you can play with Vlad again tomorrow”? Is it normal for spouses of heads of state to try to bring an end to meetings?

That just sounds deranged.

Maybe she was worried that his cognitive issues would be getting worse and more obvious as the time drew out. I expect they probably were.

Trump earlier today at the G20:

Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 7, 2017

That’s so typical of his tiny provincial mind. Is it likely that “everyone” at a global meeting is talking about some bit of minutia from US domestic politics / technology? Of course it’s not. Oddly enough people in the rest of the world have their own concerns, not all of which center on Donald Trump of Queens, New York.

John Podesta is more polite than I am:

1/ On a x-country road trip with my wife;

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

2/ Pulled in for a pit stop in E. Fairmont W. Va. to see that our whack job POTUS @realDonaldTrump is tweeting about me at the G20.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

3/ Get a grip man, the Russians committed a crime when they stole my emails to help get you elected President.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

4/ Maybe you might try to find a way to mention that to President Putin.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

5/ BTW, I had nothing to do with the DNC.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

6/ God only knows what you'll be raving about on twitter by the time we get to Utah.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

7/7 Dude, get your head in the game. You’re representing the US at the G20.

— John Podesta (@johnpodesta) July 7, 2017

He can’t. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know what it means. He doesn’t know what his head is, or how to access it, or how to get it in the game. He has no control over any of this. He has only blurts.

The director of the Office of Government Ethics is resigning.

Walter M. Shaub Jr., the government’s top ethics watchdog who has repeatedly gone head-to-head with the Trump administration over conflicts of interest, said on Thursday that he was calling it quits.

Mr. Shaub’s five-year term as the director of the Office of Government Ethics is not set to expire until January, but with little chance of renewal and an appealing offer in hand from a nonpartisan advocacy group, he said the time was right to leave.

“There isn’t much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics, given the current situation,” Mr. Shaub said in an interview on Thursday. “O.G.E.’s recent experiences have made it clear that the ethics program needs to be strengthened.”

But of course now that Trump will be appointing a new director, it won’t be.

In a short letter informing President Trump of his decision, Mr. Shaub did not offer a specific reason for his departure but extolled “the principle that public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws and ethical principles above private gain.” He had not been pressured to resign, he said.

A rather pointed observation, but it won’t make a dent in Trump, because nothing does. Narcissists are like that.

The intensity of feeling over what is usually an obscure job speaks to the central role ethics have come to play in Mr. Trump’s Washington, where the vast holdings of the president and his cabinet, as well as an influx of advisers from businesses and lobbying firms, have raised a rash of accusations of conflicts of interest.

A rash of accusations that reflect a rash of realities.

Mr. Shaub, 46, has faced an uncertain future at the agency since Mr. Trump took office in January. In the weeks between the president’s unexpected election victory and his inauguration, Mr. Shaub had taken an extraordinary gamble: He advocated very publicly on Twitter, and in a rare public speech, that Mr. Trump liquidate his vast business and personal holdings. The arrangement, Mr. Shaub argued, was the only truly ethical option.

Mr. Trump did not heed his advice, and by the middle of January, Mr. Shaub thought he might be fired. To minimize his attachment to the position, he packed up the personal possessions that filled his office.

But he was not fired, even as he continued to spar with Mr. Trump’s aides over a range of ethical concerns, including the ethics office’s authority to exercise oversight of the White House.

In February, he recommended that the White House disciplineKellyanne Conway, a top adviser to the president, after she made an on-air endorsement of the clothing line of Ivanka Trump, the president’s daughter. The White House Counsel’s Office disagreed and took no disciplinary action.

More recently, Mr. Shaub and the administration fought over a routine request by the ethics office for copies of waivers issued to White House appointees to work in the Trump administration. The Office of Management and Budget initially balked at the request, challenging Mr. Shaub’s legal authority even to ask for the information and asking him to withdraw it. After Mr. Shaub fired back with a stern 10-page letter shooting down the argument, the White House backed down.

The White House eventually released the waivers, showing it had granted at least a dozen exemptions for aides to work on policy matters they had handled as lobbyists or to engage with former colleagues in private-sector jobs. Mr. Shaub objected to the fact that many of the waivers were undated and unsigned, and that some gave approvals for acts retroactively.

In short, Trump presides over an ethical sewer.

Does it matter that Trump didn’t go to the Warsaw Ghetto? Yes, it matters.

In a statement released Wednesday, Jewish community leaders expressed regret that the U.S. president would not be visiting the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes.

“Ever since the fall of Communism in 1989, all U.S. presidents and vice-presidents visiting Warsaw had made a point of visiting the Monument to the Heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto,” the statement read. “They did this in the name of the American people, who had played such a central role in bringing down fascism, and in that of the universal commemoration of the victims of the Shoah, and condemnation of its perpetrators, that people of all nationalities and religions express.”

The statement — signed by Anna Chipczynska, president of the Jewish Community of Warsaw, Lesław Piszewski, president of the Union of the Jewish Communities in Poland, and Michael Schudrich, the chief rabbi of Poland — noted that Trump was speaking nearby. “We deeply regret that President Donald Trump, though speaking in public barely a mile away from the Monument, chose to break with that laudable tradition,” it concluded. “We trust that this slight does not reflect the attitudes and feelings of the American people.”

Well it does reflect the attitudes and feelings of an unpleasantly large segment of the American people…but not all of us.

Presidential records and news reports show that every president since 1989 had visited the Warsaw Ghetto on their first state visit to Poland. President George H.W. Bush had been the first to visit the site in July 1989, when he attended a wreath-laying ceremony during a two-day trip to Poland just months after communism ended in the country. President Bill Clinton attended ceremonies commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in July 1994. President George W. Bush laid a wreath at the ghetto when he visited in 2001, as did President Barack Obama in 2011.

So why didn’t Trump? Laziness? Indifference? Casual rudeness? Cluelessness? All those?

I don’t know. He’s an empty-headed real estate grifter, and empty-headed real estate grifters can’t be expected to know what the Warsaw Ghetto even was, let alone care enough about it to go visit it when they’re a mile away. Basically that may be all that’s necessary when wondering why Trump does something or neglects something for no clear reason. There’s just nothing much there. He’s an empty suit. He’s the kind of guy you want to get away from if he happens to corner you at a gathering, because he’s so empty. He’s a howling desert wilderness of nothing.

Apparently Polish state tv has said that Trump’s Warsaw speech was influenced by a very right-wing and anti-Semitic historian…but so far I haven’t been able to find any other source for the claim, so I don’t know if it’s true or not.

Hope Not Hate is the only online source, via the Polish state tv claim.

Donald Trump’s visit to Poland on 5-6 July has been marred by controversy over the alleged influence of a well-known far right activist.

Trump is going to speak at a public rally near the 1944 Warsaw Uprising monument. Right-wing groups are organising buses to transport people from all over Poland in order to provide a big crowd for the event. Apparently it is the first US President in many years whose visit to Poland does not include a tribute to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial that is a short walking distance from the other monument at a time when antisemitism has been reportedly on the rise in both USA and Poland.

Well, that’s Trump – skip the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising memorial because, you know, Jews, so probably lefties too, plus Jews, not the nice kind like Ivanka and Jared but the Jewie Jew kind.

On 3 July, Polish state television reported in its main news broadcast that Trump’s speech at the rally has been drawn up in consultation with Polish-American historian Marek J. Chodakiewicz.

Chodakiewicz himself appeared in the report and commented on the speech’s contents. It has also been reported Chodakiewicz is to be a member of the presidential delegation flying to Warsaw.

The report raised eyebrows because of Chodakiewicz’s long record of far right links. He is mostly known as a denier of Polish responsibility for acts of antisemitism, including the infamous Jedwabne pogrom of 1941.

He has repeatedly claimed Jews themselves were chiefly responsible for the hostility of their Polish neighbours. Accusations of Jewish involvement with Communism have been present in many of Chodakiewicz’s writings.

A frequent contributor to Polish right-wing media, he has recently referred to Bernie Sanders as “a Jewish bolshevik”.

He defended a Breitbart News writer who attacked Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum by calling her a “Polish, Jewish, American elitist” and accusing her of having “global media contacts”.

Chodakiewicz teaches at a Washington DC-based institution, the Institute of World Politics, but he has been active on the Polish far right spectrum. For example, he spoke at a rally organised by the extreme-right Nationalist Movement (Ruch Narodowy, RN) in June 2014. During his speech, he exclaimed: “We want a Catholic Poland, not a bolshevik one, not multicultural or gay!”

In other words, utterly repellent and probably dangerous, so it would be highly newsworthy if he really is part of Trump’s gang in Poland. But it’s not clear that that’s true.

Back in 2009, the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, assisted by the Warsaw-based Never Again Association, exposed Chodakiewicz’s far right views and connections in a widely-commented article.

For example, Jan T. Gross, a Princeton University history professor known for his books on anti-Jewish pogroms was quoted saying about Chodakiewicz: “The guy is an ideologist of the radical right, (…) I don’t have any doubts that he’s anti-Semitic.”

In the wake of the SPLC publication, Chodakiewicz lost his seat on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum Council, a position he had received, to the surprise of many, on George W.Bush’s nomination.

We’ve learned lately how wrong the SPLC can be, but that doesn’t mean it’s always wrong.

On 4 July 2017, Polish state television repeated the assertion that Chodakiewicz had an influence in Trump’s planned speech in Warsaw. A right-wing columnist Stanislaw Janecki spoke approvingly about Chodakiewicz’s influence and suggested the emphasis on the Polish uprising of 1944, rather than the Jewish Ghetto uprising of 1943, was attributable to Chodakiewicz’s advice.

Chodakiewicz himself has bragged to media about his allotted seat on board Air Force One. Days after the original report on Polish TV, US officials stopped short of clearly confirming or denying Chodakiewicz’s involvement in the presidential visit.

So who knows. I would like to know. Let us know if you hear anything.

Trump is in Poland, and he’s done a press conference and then a speech. The speech was ok because of course someone else wrote it and he simply read it. The presser was the usual embarrassment.

Then there is Trump’s willingness to continue his ongoing war with the media while abroad — and not just abroad but in a country where freedom of the press has been considerably curtailed in recent years.

The first question Trump took in Thursday’s press conference was from David Martosko, the US politics editor for DailyMail.com and a man who was once mentioned as a possible press secretary in this White House. And it was focused on CNN’s alleged “fake news” coverage of the president.

Past presidents traveling abroad might have deflected the question, acknowledging that the press didn’t always get it right but pivoting to a broader defense of the absolute necessity of a free and independent media.

Not Trump.

“I think what CNN did was unfortunate for them,” he said. “As you know, they now have some pretty serious problems. They have been fake news for a long time. They have been covering me in a very dishonest way.”

That right there? Wholly inappropriate. Fifth Column level inappropriate. Quisling level inappropriate. It’s a frank lie that CNN is fake news, and he’s basically flinging shit at his own country and its institutions by saying it is…along with demonstrating just how self-centered and narcissistic he is, in case Poland had missed it until now.

After asking the Polish prime minister whether they had that same problem with the media — Nota bene: Recent crackdowns on the Polish media have led to the country dropping from 18th in 2015 to 54th in 2017 in the World Press Freedom Index — Trump offered up another broadside on the American media:

What we want to see in the United States is honest, beautiful, free, but honest press. We want to see fair press. I think it is a very important thing. We don’t want fake news. And by the way, not everybody is fake news. But we don’t want fake news. Bad thing, very bad for our country.

That’s Trump aggressively undermining the free press while in a country that has worked to stifle media dissent in recent years. That’s truly remarkable.

Yes, it is. Remarkable and horrifying and profoundly dismal.

They’ve tried. His people have tried to prep him for the meeting with Putin, and to convey to him the things he shouldn’t do. But does that mean he is prepared? Of course not. He doesn’t listen, he doesn’t remember, he doesn’t care, he doesn’t think anyone knows better than he does.

President Trump has been briefed repeatedly. His advisers have alerted him to the web of potential risks, complex issues and diplomatic snags.

But even his top aides do not know precisely what Mr. Trump will decide to say or do when he meets President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia face-to-face this week on the sidelines of the Group of 20 economic summit gathering in Hamburg, Germany. And that is what most worries his advisers and officials across his administration as he embarks Wednesday on his second foreign trip, first to Warsaw and then to Hamburg.

Of course it is. He has no impulse-control and no ability to think ahead. He’s like a clown on a spring.

“There’s a fair amount of nervousness in the White House and at the State Department about this meeting and how they manage it because they see a lot of potential risks,” said Steven Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine who has worked for the National Security Council and the State Department.

Mind you, that’s still a small amount of worry overall, because the State Department is so understaffed.

Mr. Trump himself is not troubled by the meeting. He has told aides he is more annoyed by the prospect of being scolded by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and other leaders for pulling out of the Paris climate accords and for his hard line on immigration.

What I’m saying. He’s too stupid to understand what he should be troubled about, and too narcissistic to tolerate the knowledge that Angela Merkel thinks he’s an ignorant buffoon.

A day before Mr. Trump was to leave Washington, the White House announced that the meeting with Mr. Putin would be a formal bilateral discussion, rather than a quick pull-aside at the economic summit meeting that some had expected.

The format benefits both. Mr. Putin, a canny one-on-one operator who once brought a Labrador to a meeting with Ms. Merkel because he knew she was afraid of dogs, will be able to take the measure of Mr. Trump.

So Putin will bring an intelligent woman to his meeting with Trump.

Mr. Trump’s aides are seeking structure and predictability. They hope that a formal meeting, with aides present and an agenda, will leave less room for improvisation and relegate Russia’s meddling in the campaign to a secondary topic, behind more pressing policy concerns that the president is eager to address.

“Nobody has found the slightest evidence of collusion, any evidence the vote was tampered with, so now they have turned their obsession to Russian ‘interference,’” said Kellyanne Conway, the president’s senior counselor and former campaign manager. “I don’t think that’s what the American people are interested in.”

And that’s how much Trump’s people care about the integrity of US elections – not at all.

The potential pitfalls are more than theoretical. White House officials recall with dread the images that emerged from Mr. Trump’s May meeting with Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak of Russia in the Oval Office, which showed the president grinning, laughing and clasping hands with the Russian officials.

The biggest concern, people who have spoken recently with members of his team said, is that Mr. Trump, in trying to forge a rapport, appears to be unwittingly siding with Mr. Putin. Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin has expressed disdain for the news media, and he asserted in a recent interview that secretive elements within the United States government were working against the president’s agenda. Two people close to Mr. Trump said they expected the men to bond over their disdain for “fake news.”

Well that’s Trump. Who exactly is it that they think they’re working for?

The Washington Post states the obvious: Trump has never had a plan for dealing with North Korea. Well no kidding, Trump has never had a plan for anything, because he’s had only stupid blurts.

We forget sometimes that President Trump’s political rhetoric was forged not over years of policymaking or in discussions with experts on foreign policy and domestic issues…

Who’s “we”? I don’t forget that. I never forget that for a second. I never forget that Trump is a random brainless blowhard such as you might sit next to on a plane on a bad day, and that he has never had any kind of exposure to policymaking or discussions with experts on foreign policy and domestic issues of any kind whatsoever. I never forget that he can barely read, and does it as little as possible, and that he knows nothing except marketing. Literally nothing. He has a head stuffed full of blurts, and blurts don’t add up to knowledge, no matter how many of them you collect.

We forget sometimes that President Trump’s political rhetoric was forged not over years of policymaking or in discussions with experts on foreign policy and domestic issues, but in weekly phone interviews with “Fox and Friends.” Before he declared his candidacy, the real estate developer and TV personality would appear on the program every Monday morning, weighing in on the issues of the day as the hosts offering their now-familiar lack of criticism of his musings.

I didn’t forget that last part, because I didn’t know it. What on earth did they do that for? Why did anybody anywhere ask Trump for his opinion on the issues of the day? You’d be better off asking the nearest dog.

Host Steve Doocy broached that subject by noting that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un might soon test a nuclear weapon “or do something dopey like that” — but that China might actually be starting to put pressure on the rogue nation.

“Well, I think China has total control over the situation,” Trump responded. North Korea “wouldn’t exist for a month without China. And I think China, frankly, as you know — and I’ve been saying it for a long time, and people are starting to see that I’m right — China is not our friend.”

And blah blah blah, and somehow we got stuck with Mr Windbag as president.

How did “Fox and Friends” reply to Trump’s argument? Well, the conversation quickly transitioned to Trump having been inaugurated into the pro wrestling Hall of Fame.

To be fair, Trump wasn’t a politician then, so there was much less of a reason to demand a hard answer. Of course, there was also little reason to ask his opinion. But this is the crucible in which Trump’s policy on North Korea was formed — and over the course of the presidential campaign, it didn’t evolve much.

Right, and this is something I don’t forget, and neither do the people I know. We’d be happier and more tranquil, though no less doomed, if we could forget it, but we can’t.

During the general-election debates, Trump stuck to the same theme. “China should solve that problem for us,” he said in September 2016. “China should go into North Korea. China is totally powerful as it relates to North Korea.”

When Trump met with Obama during the presidential transition, Obama reportedly warned Trump that North Korea would be the most urgent problem he would face. Trump, during that period, continued to argue that Chinamust address the North Korea threat and that, under his watch, no North Korean weapon could strike the United States.

North Korea just stated that it is in the final stages of developing a nuclear weapon capable of reaching parts of the U.S. It won't happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017

Once he became president, though, Trump’s tone shifted.

In April of this year, with the 100-day mark of his presidency looming, Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo that getting China to fix the problem was not that simple. Describing a conversation with President Xi Jinping of China, Trump said that North Korea was the first thing he brought up. However, Xi “then explain[ed] thousands of years of history with Korea. Not that easy.”

“In other words,” Trump said, “not as simple as people would think.”

No, in other words, not as simple as Trump alone among humans said it was for years. Trump is the only person on the planet who thought it would be simply a matter of ordering the Chinese to deal with it and being Big and Tough enough that they would believe it. Nobody else thought that. Nobody else is that ignorant and simpleminded but confident.

Since then he’s been contradicting himself on the subject every few days – China must deal, China can’t deal, China must deal, Oops it turns out to be difficult, who knew. Now that’s some effective plan right there.

China can fix this and needs to. Maybe China can fix this. If China doesn’t fix this, we will. China isn’t fixing this, but can.

The reason for this back-and-forth is obvious: Trump promised that he could put pressure on the Chinese to cut off North Korea, forcing that nation to end its nuclear ambitions. But once Trump took office, that policy proved to be much harder than he’d presented. So, lacking an obvious solution (since none exists), he continues to try to blame China’s policy while explaining why they haven’t been moved to action.

Thus demonstrating to the entire world what an incompetent reckless bozo he is.

The president’s current conundrum is twofold. First, there’s no easy solution. Second, Trump promised that there was one.

Had his policy been crafted by a team other than Fox’s early-morning talk show hosts, that second problem might not exist.

What could possibly go wrong?

Today in Trump:

North Korea has just launched another missile. Does this guy have anything better to do with his life? Hard to believe that South Korea…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2017

….and Japan will put up with this much longer. Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 4, 2017

Yes, he actually said “Does this guy have anything better to do with his life?” The head of state of a large complex country who spends most of his time watching tv, tweeting, and playing golf, asked if another guy has anything better to do with his life. Irony is dead and cremated.

Also this bizarre attempt to shove it all onto Japan and China. Granted they are neighbors and we’re not, but Trump knew (or should have known) about our self-appointed role as Global Cop before he went for the job, so it’s too late for him to try to give it back now. North Korea wouldn’t be threatening us if we hadn’t been threatening them for the past seven decades. That’s the situation, and Trump doesn’t get to hide under his desk in hopes it will go away.

Guest post by Maureen Brian, originally posted on Facebook.

This was published immediately after the Inauguration but here it is again because six months on it might have been done with a difference of emphasis. Also because I am sick to the back teeth of running into people mindlessly referring to Trump as the “leader of the free world.” The rest of this is addressed to them with no offence to my friends who have more sense.

Listen up, kiddies! Leader of the free world is not a title at all: it is an epithet applied to whomever is believed worthy and by general consent. No, it is not in the gift of the Electoral College and you can’t buy it.

It was first applied to FDR in exceptional circumstances, when he was supporting and funding much of the war against fascism against opposition at home and against the direction of much of your history. Monroe Doctrine, anyone?

Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy all lived up to that level of concern for the world and interest in it. Johnson might have done if he’d sought another term and if he’d not been so busy turning Kennedy’s dreams into some sort of reality right there at home.

Since then your Presidents have been a mixed bag. Only Clinton and Obama had enough interest in/knowledge of the rest of the world to even think of such a title and neither seemed terribly bothered about claiming it. Just like FDR.

As for Trump? No way, José! He knows nothing of the world or its history, he pisses off allies from the long-established to the lukewarm or unreliable. Back home he constantly attacks various clauses of your First Amendment when they or something very like them would be the founding principles of anything described as free.

So stop claiming the title for this man. Doing so merely confirms your political illiteracy and is an unnecessary burden on this world as it actually exists.