Trump posed a danger to national security
CNN says it’s really that bad:
In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials — including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff — that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States, according to White House and intelligence officials intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.
Oh. Well, great. Unprepared, kissy-kissy with Putin and Erdogan, abusive to allies – so that’s wonderful. It’s what you’d expect from a failed casino huckster and vulgar creep, but so then…how did we end up with him?
The calls made his top people think he was delusional. (Of course he’s delusional. He thinks he’s hot stuff.)
The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.
This is the Trump we all see all the time, so why would anyone think he would be different on the phone to Merkel or Macron or Trudeau?
By far the greatest number of Trump’s telephone discussions with an individual head of state were with Erdogan, who sometimes phoned the White House at least twice a week and was put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump, according to the sources. Meanwhile, the President regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America’s principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was “stupid.”
Erm…that takes even my breath away.
Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia’s autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, “great” accomplishments as President, and the “idiocy” of his Oval Office predecessors, according to the sources.
So he talks to them the way he talks to all of us on Twitter. Of course he does: the way he talks on Twitter is the best he can do. It’s not as if he has another register for serious purposes. With him what you see is what you get.
He especially loved talking about how much better he is than Bush2 and Obama.
The full, detailed picture drawn by CNN’s sources of Trump’s phone calls with foreign leaders is consistent with the basic tenor and some substantive elements of a limited number of calls described by former national security adviser John Bolton in his book, “The Room Where It Happened.” But the calls described to CNN cover a far longer period than Bolton’s tenure, are much more comprehensive — and seemingly more damning — in their sweep.
…
The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump’s tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources.
Two sources compared many of the President’s conversations with foreign leaders to Trump’s recent press “briefings” on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.
The performance of a very chaotic very undisciplined very stupid blob of flesh.
In addition to Merkel and May, the sources said, Trump regularly bullied and disparaged other leaders of the western alliance during his phone conversations — including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison — in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America’s governors.
He shouted at Macron a lot, but he saved his best bullying for the women.
In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as “near-sadistic” by one of the sources and confirmed by others. “Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her ‘stupid,’ and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians … He’s toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with.”
The calls “are so unusual,” confirmed a German official, that special measures were taken in Berlin to ensure that their contents remained secret. The official described Trump’s behavior with Merkel in the calls as “very aggressive” and said that the circle of German officials involved in monitoring Merkel’s calls with Trump has shrunk: “It’s just a small circle of people who are involved and the reason, the main reason, is that they are indeed problematic.”
Trump’s conversations with May, the UK Prime Minister from 2016 to 2019, were described as “humiliating and bullying,” with Trump attacking her as “a fool” and spineless in her approach to Brexit, NATO and immigration matters.
“He’d get agitated about something with Theresa May, then he’d get nasty with her on the phone call,” One source said. “It’s the same interaction in every setting — coronavirus or Brexit — with just no filter applied.”
Merkel remained calm and outwardly unruffled in the face of Trump’s attacks —”like water off a duck’s back,” in the words of one source — and she regularly countered his bluster with recitations of fact. The German official quoted above said that during Merkel’s visit to the White House two years ago, Trump displayed “very questionable behavior” that “was quite aggressive … [T]he Chancellor indeed stayed calm, and that’s what she does on the phone.”
Prime Minister May, in contrast, became “flustered and nervous” in her conversations with the President. “He clearly intimidated her and meant to,” said one of CNN’s sources.
I wish I could grab his arm and pinch a fold of flesh with pliers right now. Pinch it hard, and not stop. With his people watching and smiling.
Angela Merkel with her PhD in Quantum Chemistry and former career as a research chemist is obviously no intellectual match for someone who can’t even make money by running a casino.
latsot,
Don’t be silly.
Having an uncle with a Ph.D >>>>>>>> Having a Ph.D
I dunno Latsot, it takes bigly skill to go broke while owning a licence to cheat people out of money.
What an oddly specific fantasy.
(Not that I’d lift a finger to stop you.)
I’m sure there are all sorts of good diplomatic and geopolitical reasons not to, but I wish the German and UK governments were more transparent about these incidents.
I am sure there is a better explanation for all this than Trump having fallen out of his tree. Maybe the battery went flat in his toy train. Maybe he thought he was grabbing a pussy and it turned out to be a cranky tom cat. With big claws.
The possibilities in his case are endless.
In other words, he continued his role from The Apprentice, the boss kicking buts and calling out idiots, because that’s Joe Sixpack’s idea of how an executive gets things done. It’s Donny’s idea, too. If the ratings are good, you’re doing it right.
Mattis.
Tillerson.
McMaster.
Kelly.
Bolton.
etc.
All knew that Trump represents a danger to the country and the world, all knew that he makes foreign policy decisions based on his own perceived self interest, all knew that he berated allies and genuflected at authoritarians, yet none saw fit to warn Congress or the public (at least, not until Bolton published his own self-serving book). They did not leave because of “philosophical differences” or policy disputes; they left (or were fired) because they knew that the man occupying the most powerful, and potentially most dangerous, position in the world was uniquely unfit and dangerous.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you that these men are heroes or patriots.
And I suspect Mitch McConnell knows it, too. I mean, it’s hard to miss. He, too, was serving his own narrowly defined self-interest.
A compromised, incurious, narcissistic, dumbass bully, with no impulse control – who could have known that wouldn’t serve our national interests well?
Skeletor @ 4 – well no shit. Of course it’s an odd way to put it. It was meant to be. I put things oddly quite a lot. Is that news to you? I don’t understand why you read this site at all. There are other literal-minded people out there but I’m not one of them. I’m never going to be.
iknklast,
Good point. I also forgot to include Pence.
@Rob
Trump’s casino bankruptcies were not business failures. They were, in fact, outstanding successes. All of his bankruptcies did exactly what they were designed to do: launder billions for the Russian mob.
Sarah Kendzior’s new book lays it out quite beautifully. Trump is 3rd generation mobbed up.
And yet any one of them could have been. Okay, maybe not heroic, but perhaps minimally conscientious.
I really don’t get why none of these people used the occasion of their resignation or dismissal to warn the public of the danger that Trump represented to America’s national security.
Of course on one level I can:
(1) Book deals, speaking engagements, whatever. Personal gain. They were working for TRUMPl. Birds of a feather and all.
or
(2) Trump had something he could use against them. (Just as Putin likely has stuff he can use on Trump. Maybe Putin collected stuff for Trump on his appointees for just this purpose. Maybe Putin suggested these appointees because they were already compromised and vulnerable. Who knows? Instant conspiracy! This game is fun!) But as far as I’m concerned, “working for Trump” is already a black mark. Anyone willingly working for Trump had to have known what they were getting themselves into and desrves no sympathy. Hell, being a whistleblower against Trump would go some ways towards redemption and rehabilitation.
But in the end, their silence has shielded and covered for Trump, and, knowing what they knew, surely they could see that ultimately that would look bad on them? Everything Trump touches turns to shit. They must have known that protecting Trump after they were no longer bound to his service, would only reflect poorly on themselves? Why show continuing loyalty to someone so fundamentally disinclined to reciprocate?
If they were at all animated by a sense of civic mindedness or public service (unlikely, I know, because working for TRUMP), then raising alarms confirming his unfitness for office would have been the right thing to do. If he’s really a danger to the country, why not say so? It’s not like they would be safe from the consequences of his incompetence, living safe and secure on another planet. Wealth can only buy you so much protection. Locking the door to your first class stateroom is no help when the ship you’re on is sinking. You might be in business class, but if the unqualified, delusional pilot decides to fly into a mountain thinking he can fly through it, you’ll still end up dead. ( Penthouse suite in a burning highrise seems to fit, too.Feel free to insert your favourite analogy of this kind.)
Even if they had no sense of duty to the country, and they supported Trump’s policies, they should have spoken out. If they “believed” in Trump’s “vision” (pretending for the moment that he has ever had anything resembling a vision or policy beyond self agrandizement and immediate ego gratification), if Trump’s own behaviour risked endangering the actual policy goals and vision they themselves wished to see come to fruition, wouldn’t it behoove them to do something to protect the successful completion of those goals?
I really don’t get it.
I was expressing amusement at the very specific desire to crush his arm skin with pliers, not intending to criticize it in any way.
I read this site because I like your take on a lot of things.