In the words of John Brennan, who led the CIA during President Obama’s second term:
"Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???"
Senator John McCain: “one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory” and said that taken in combination with his “bombastic and erratic conduct” with allies, it represented “a recent low point in the history of the American presidency.”
“No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad,”
I'd like to hear the response from some of our Republican members on the board. How are you not demanding Trump be impeached immediately? How do you justify this to yourself?
Since you want to do this in a different spot in order to avoid crowding out the period of reflection on McCain...
I don’t like what he did.
He’d just made a show of pushing on NATO for funding with a deal in place before the trip to do it.
Then he swung by the UK saying what the EU has been doing to erect barriers to global competition is unacceptable and punishes the people least able to afford it with their good intentions and social engineering gone wrong. We are gratified to see our greatest ally turning again to the free market. America is ready to rapidly negotiate a fair bilateral deal with unprecedented cooperation and access that’ll not only replace anything lost by exiting the EU but fire the UK economy off like a rocket for generations, yet never interfering in sovereignty. All they have to do is preserve their ability to meet global rather than EU standards and come to the table with an open mind. We’d start this conversation right now if the UK wants. We could have an agreement in principle ready to execute the moment of exit if that’s what the UK wants.
The third leg was meeting Russia. He should have made a show of confronting Putin on attempts to influence the election, and sought a bilateral agreement not to try to interfere in each other’s elections in the future. In principle that should have been epically easy to get. Especially since we interfere in their elections far far more than they do in ours.
Instead, he did what he did, and that was not particularly politically astute given the domestic politics.
In the real world though, Trump ran on a position that our foreign policy is outdated. The Soviets have been gone for decades. The Russian economy is smaller than several US states. The fact that Putin is a dick and has done some bad things, is true, but not the priority.
They have lots of nuke laying around, but that makes it more important that they feel secure with a buffer around them and have a successful economy lest they descend into chaos and control of those things be lost. They’re actively and effectively combating Islamic extremism at home and around the world including in Syria. We have more to gain from cooperating with the enemy of our enemy than growing the next bin laden to oppose them when we have nothing to gain. NATO is if not obsolete then aligned facing the wrong set of threats. We do need to rejigger our forces within nato and continue to evaluate what balance of power we position in that line versus others. The EU has changed from an economic trade alliance that followed the Marshall plan and served as a market for US goods, to now being an economic rival to the US. As they continue to broaden unification, now including a unified military, it’s clear they’re incrementally becoming the United States of Europe that several of their past and present leaders have advocated for. US interests are not what they were 50 years ago while that process continues to move forward. It was Obama who sought to pivot away from Europe and away from a Russian threat, and towards Asia. China is very clearly the superpower threat intent on toppling western values and imposing their economic will. That is where our attention is truly needed.
You may see some wisdom in that or not. I don’t care. It is a rational logical legitimate policy position for the US to take. It doesn’t require being bought off or blackmailed by the Russians to think or say such things. It is not remotely treasonous to take those positions.
We’ve always made the mistake of preparing for the last war and been caught flat footed when the next one isn’t what we’ve spent all our effort preparing for. We should not pay the very high price of making that mistake again.
Those emphasizing the threat of Russia as the biggest out there and closed off to reevaluating our relationship, commitment, and commitment of resources to NATO, the ones saying western democracy or western values when truly those things are vastly different when not measured next to a common enemy of the soviet threat to the world... those are the same people who benefit from subsiding the EU and shorting the US economy. While that might make a good investment for a few, it isn’t good for the people at large.
So the President, who is the polar opposite of a great communicator, doesn’t take expert guidance well, and spouts off dumb crap without thinking... he could have made a trifecta of that trip and come back with the midterms on lock. Instead, he screwed it up.
That’s not great, but it’s also really irrelevant to the underlying strategic and economic policy, which makes tons of sense. If that guy could get out of his own way, keep his mouth shut, read a teleprompter, and let results speak for themselves... he’d be killing it right now.
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