So last Wednesday was a weird one. Without even getting into the insanity and outright Republican trainwreck which was the Michael Cohen hearing, Donald Trump also went to Hanoi, Vietnam to hang out with his buddy Kim Jon Un and did…nothing. Like, not a damn thing. Which is weird. Like, don’t get me wrong, Trump’s incompetence is foregone, but it seems like Trump’s negotiation team, lead by Mike Pompeo had already hammered out a few small things, including a possible declaration that the Korean War was over (I mean, it’s technically been a cold was since the 50s), which might very well have cinched up that Nobel Peace Prize Trump has been coveting, but in a wild turn of events, Trump pulled an about face and walked away from negotiations before doing ANYTHING. I know Trump supporters are saying some dumb thing about good deal making allowing for the possibility of walking away at any time, and I suppose there is something to that, but part of that you walking away with the most leverage. And while North Korea would LIKE to have their sanctions eased, they clearly don’t NEED it. They’ve been dealing with crazy sanctions on some level or another for a couple of decades now, ever since we found out about the severe human rights violations that are the way of life for North Korean citizens. So what was the point of this summit at this point? It was just a colossal waste of time and money, which is really going to end up being the tagline of this administration.
I’m not gonna lie, I watched Donald Trump’s Black History Month speech with a hint of both trepidation and excitement that he would manage to unwittingly say unapologetically tone deaf and/or racist. Fortunately (for him), he stuck to whatever script he was given. He didn’t meander or go of the rails on a tangent. He did bring up Black Unemployment again, which is a statement that is, at best, context sensitive, but he avoided a lot of his natural urges to campaign (mostly) and avoided basically all hot button topics. In retrospect, it was boring. On a slow news day, it’s always a bummer when Trump doesn’t speak his mind and give us all a little dose of the crazy. That sounds self destructive, but that sounds about right when the whole country seems to be losing it’s mind.
Donald Trump’s phone habits…well it isn’t new news. His penchant for using non-secure cellphones is well documented. The only weird thing is that halfway through his term, this is still a problem. Despite his claims that this story is a total fabrication, we know it isn’t, because his Twitter rants claiming fake news come from HIS IPHONE. But his flippancy over using unsecure lines is ludicrously irresponsible. Seriously. He doesn’t seem to realize that the conversations he has are of national importance, which is weird considering there has never been a person alive with a more inflated sense of self importance. And considering the scares over hacking that have become all too prevalent in today’s political climate, the idea of vulnerable phones in the Oval Office is just unbelievable. And yet here we are.
So, Donald Trump called himself a “Nationalist” on Monday night, and naturally, the left went nuts because of it. And I can see why. The word “nationalist” has connotations leading to racism, with many far right folks often identified as “White Nationalists”. But it’s important to note that it’s unfair to claim that Donald Trump is a racist simply because he self identifies as a nationalist. It is fair to claim that it makes him a Xenophobe and an isolationist, but being a nationalist DOES NOT mean he’s a racist. The way he treats people of color and his policies that show he only cares about White People is what make him a racist. Because he is still definitely a racist. The way he talks about people from predominantly non-white countries, his dog whistles towards White Supremacists during his campaign, and his reluctance to condemn the White Supremacists who give him support are the obvious examples. If you did research, you can find examples of him and his family’s racist tendencies in the way they treated black tenants in their properties as far back as the 1970s. Now, some might say “is the distinction between racist and nationalist REALLY that important?” and to that I have to argue YES. Yes it is. Because the fact that Donald Trump identifies as a nationalist is bad for reasons completely separate from his racism. His nationalism is already to leading to policies and actions that are damaging our relationships to the rest of the world, and with world that gets more interconnected by the day, having a leader who wants to focus only on our borders, and create an “us” versus “them” scenario, with “them” being 7.3 billion people…well nothing good comes of that.
I feel like every week, I’m reading some new story about how the conditions are worsening for people who have to work for Donald Trump. For a while, it was just general discontent, lots of random media leaks and general distrust. Every time an expose or book would come out, Trump would call it fiction, and we’d hear that he was angry that staffers might be talking. Then Bob Woodward, the nation’s most well respected journalist and presidential biographer, released his book, and the hype surrounding that caused even more turmoil. Within DAYS of that, a Op-Ed written by an anonymous West Wing staffer was published in the New York Times, and things got so bad that rumors of polygraph tests were starting to circulate. Now a new Op-Ed from the Times suggest that staffers may have been plotting to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Trump from office. Now, in fairness to that story, the validity of that claim is in question. It’s been noted that the remarks in question may have been sarcastic or meant to be a joke, but none the less, apparently the atmosphere for employees in the White House has only gotten worse. Trump seems to have lost confidence that he can trust anyone in his employ, and rumor has it, prone to outbursts at anyone who seems traitor-y. But this can’t last forever. There has to be some kind of breaking point, right?
I have to wonder what morale in the White House looks like these days. I mean the past month has been a pretty big barrage of bad poll numbers and lots of looking over shoulders. We have open leaks in the White House that contributed to a biting, quite damaging book by arguably the most trusted journalist of the past 60 years, Bob Woodward, and an anonymous Op-Ed in the New York Times from a West Wing Staffer. North Korea continues to do whatever the hell they want, China doesn’t seem to understand that they’re supposed to be losing this trade war, and are doing a pretty good job of attacking Trump where it counts: his base. And all Trump can seem to do is shout about how unfair it is. Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are officially cooperating with the Feds, which I’m sure Trump can’t love, and he is doing random things like declassifying documents because Fox News Pundits are asking him to, without bothering to check if such an act might actually be more harmful than helpful. His Supreme Court nomination is probably the most contested in history, with it’s own FBI investigation to boot. I think this is what a downward spiral looks like.
Despite Donald Trump’s constant self back pats about his unprecedented success in North Korea, there seems to be a growing cause for concern that MAYBE Kim Jong Un isn’t as committed to de-nuclearizing the peninsula as he first might have seemed. In fact, intelligence reports seem to indicate the exact opposite, with him expanding nuclear research sites and funding into fuel for nuclear weapons. Basically the EXACT opposite of what Trump “negotiated”. Now, pettier people might go for a fun little “I told you so!” number complete with laughter and finger pointing, but I do feel like it’s appropriate to point out that he’s not the first guy to get that promise out of a Kim on the exact same thing that never came to fruition. Though it might ache a little harder for Trump considering he couldn’t help talking up how unprecedented this whole thing was. I just wonder how long Trump will feel it’s appropriate to stay in denial about it before he finally decides he’s been had?
So some news outlets are reporting that Ex-White House staffers are having trouble getting work. Now, some claims I can see being an issue. Trump’s unpopularity is not something that looks good on a resume, and associating that reputation with a new workplace is apparently deterring some potential employers. Some of it I find rather unfortunate. Apparently some employers question the judgment of a person who was willing to work under someone like Trump, which might be a bit unfair.
So there is now a new tell-all book from inside the White House coming out by a guy named Ronald Kessler. Among his explosive allegations, he’s claiming that Kellyanne Conway was responsible for a fair share of the devastating leaks that have come from the White House, whether intentional or seemingly through incompetence, she seemed to be the person Trump’s team has long sought for releasing sordid details from inside the West Wing. I have to wonder if this will affect Kellyanne’s future with the Trump Team…
During an infrastructure speech in Ohio, Trump joked that he might have been better at his old job. I mean, we say “he joked” but I think most of us are really hoping that Trump was having an aggressive moment of introspection in front of a big crowd of people. I sometimes wonder if he really believes his own propaganda about how great he’s doing, or, if like the rest of us, realizes how much of a catastrophe things have been. It used to be that we didn’t praise a President for acting at least competently, but Trump’s approval rating shoot up when he doesn’t actively cause an international incident. So was he better at his old job? Well seeing as his old job was sitting at the head of a company, doing nothing but being a personality, being his “brand” and letting other more suited people make the day to day decisions…yeah, I think it’s fair to say he did his other job with a little more aplomb.
Mind the Exit 