More babysitters are desperately needed
The Great Left Wing Conspiracy Against Trump continues:
Mr. Bolton got into a sharp exchange on July 10 with Gordon D. Sondland, the Trump donor turned ambassador to the European Union, who was working with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to testimony provided to the investigators.
Mr. Bolton instructed Fiona Hill, the senior director for Russian and Eurasian affairs, to notify the chief lawyer for the National Security Council that Mr. Giuliani was working with Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, on a rogue operation with legal implications,
“I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Mr. Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, told Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to the testimony.
Nothing to investigate here; it’s just Nancy Pelosi picking on poor Donald Trump.
Seriously, Bolton is an radical hawk, but at least he’s not personally corrupt. He got out at the right time. Is Steve Mnuchin the only grown-up left in the Trump administration? Mnuchin is not available 24/7; they desperately need more babysitters.
Update: Headline of the day:
I Knew John Bolton Liked Regime Change, I Just Assumed He Meant Overseas
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15. October 2019 at 08:58
Want to have trouble sleeping at night? Think about what happens after Trump beats Warren in the general. Without needing to be re-elected, Trump will actually get even more Trumpy. No grownups at all. Plus his senility will advance even further.
Yet this is probably what will happen. Only Congress and the Supreme Court will reign him in. He won’t pass any legislation, but he can ramp up the executive actions, in trade and foreign policy. And of course, continue being the world’s biggest douchebag.
15. October 2019 at 10:28
msgkings. I’ve already thought about that. When you look at other Trumpian leaders (Erdogan, etc.) it gets worse the longer they are in office.
15. October 2019 at 11:02
That’s my hope actually. I also think he’s still on a leash right now. If he no longer has to win an election, he can do things that are long overdue, such as overthrowing the regime in Iran for example.
But if you look at the betrayal of the Kurds, you have to doubt that he carries out such steps. But maybe he can bring Bolton and Mattis on board again after the elections? Any hawk is welcome.
However, I expect the deep state and the media to create one scandal after another before the elections. And then one more, and one more, and one more, until Warren has a good chance of winning the election.
How Trump survives all the scandals so far is incredible and even surreal, but someday they’ll get to him, I guess.
15. October 2019 at 11:12
I find the WaPo is more serious and balanced than the NYT lately. You have to read the NYT article in detail to learn that Bolton himself didn’t say anything, but that one source said that Hill said that Bolton said that…
That’s typical NYT style: One anonymous source said that X said that Y said that….HAHA very funny.
16. October 2019 at 00:15
“One anonymous source said that X said that Y said that”
If X and Y hadn’t said that, they would have denied it publicly by now.
16. October 2019 at 10:02
– There is no evidence he is senile.
– About the kurds: the CIA started the regime change war in Syria which failed miserably.
– And yes, the kurds fought with us. They also fought with us in Iraq. They fought with us because we armed them, and we provided air support, and because they believed with USA support they could overthrow the regime and obtain some representation/power after a new government was formed. But together, we lost! The operation did not succeed. Assad is still there. And at some point, as we did with korea and Vietnam, you have to say “enough”. Enough deaths, enough with regime change wars, enough of creating chaos, enough sending our 18 year old youth into battle to die.
Sometimes you need to look a person or group in the eyes (in this case the Kurds) and say, “my friend, it didn’t work out. I’m sorry”. And then you move on! Trump is doing the right thing, and he is the first president in a very long time to stand up against the military industrial complex.
16. October 2019 at 13:54
The Central Intelligence Agency started the war in Syria. So this mess is self created, and also self destructive. It is true that the US allied with the kurds Syria, and on several occasions in Iraq, but kurds were following their self interest. It wasn’t a difficult decision to make. They want to obtain political power, which would have been certain after a regime change. Unfortunately, that regime change failed. Assad is still in power. It doesn’t mean we should stay their forever to protect them. We abandoned the south vietnamese in 1975, and that resulted in thousands of Vietnamese officers spending decades (some are still there) in reeducation camps. Nevertheless, getting out of Vietnamese was the right decision for the USA. The way you stop these situations from occurring, is to stop engaging in regime change wars.
16. October 2019 at 13:58
Christian, You said:
“he can do things that are long overdue, such as overthrowing the regime in Iran for example.”
Because the Iraq War went so well.
Richard, Yes, maybe we shouldn’t be in Syria. There are reasonable arguments both ways. But that’s not much of a defense of Trump, because he is continuing lots of other policies that have failed, such as the Iran sanctions.
And even if we should pull out, he should have done it in a less chaotic fashion. Surely a promise to pull out fairly quickly would have been enough for Turkey to hold off the invasion until things could be better organized. Especially if we told them we’d “destroy” their economy if they didn’t wait a few weeks before invading.
16. October 2019 at 14:00
Foosion, Of course. But Christian will believe what he wants to believe.
16. October 2019 at 19:34
Scott, Erdogan is especially sad. I was in Turkey for a semester in 2008. At that point, just judging by results, Erdogan’s AK Party was the most competent government Turkey had had since Attaturk or so.
Things have taken a turn for the worse since then.
17. October 2019 at 08:36
Matthias, Just wait for Trump’s second term. These autocratic jerks get worse over time, as power goes to their head.