Category: National

* Donald Trump, it’s been well-chronicled, has been involved in fake news well before the term achieved media currency. It was simply called lying back in the day.

Ironically, however, Trump even makes news when he, however inadvertently, tells the truth. Case in point: His compliment to Australian President Malcolm Turnbull the other day. The same President Turnbull whom he was less than amiable to earlier in the year. Said Trump: “You have better health care than we do.” It was meant as a vintage make-nice, Trump throw-away line. But every word counts when you’re president, whether it’s fakery, flattery or flat-out factual.

For the record, Australia’s universal healthcare system is administered by their federal government. It’s to the left of the Affordable Care Act. Oops–but who’s keeping count anymore?

Or how about his Rose Garden aside to all the groveling Republicans gathered around for the House health care announcement. “Hey, I’m president. Can you believe it, right?”

Out of the mouth of knaves.

* Trump still does, in effect, campaign speeches when the overload of policy, nuance and something approximating presidential mien prompt a return to his fan-club base. It’s given rise to a new term: “sore winner.”

* It speaks volumes when both the liberal columnist Nicholas Kristof and the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer both label Trump a “charlatan.”

* Not they we needed a reminder, but the person responsible for the “Art of the Deal” telegraphed his philosophical punches years ago. “You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole,” said Trump. “But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

We’re already past “eventually.”

* FBI Director James Comey summed up his reaction about his decision affecting the presidential vote in two words: “mildly nauseous.” Not hard to imagine future historians upchucking at that characterization of the game-changer that made Donald Trump the 45th president of the United States.

Best signage at the recent NRA convention in Atlanta was a mobile billboard that read: “You’re Not A Good Guy With A Gun. You’re a Frightened Boy With A Gun Fetish.”

* It’s obvious to all but hard-core, Trump deplorables that the first 100 days of the Trump Administration have been awful by any unspun, meaningful criterion. We won’t count the ways–from legislative false starts to foreign policy faux pas, but a recent comment by syndicated columnist Nicholas Kristof really dug deep. He said that Trump has had the worst beginning of any president since William Henry Harrison. For the record, Harrison died a month after his inauguration.

* The bad–but hardly surprising–news is that President Donald Trump has endorsed an off-shore, oil-drilling strategy. It’s called, unsurprisingly, the America First Offshore Energy Strategy. It’s an executive order that would, among other things, reverse bans in the Gulf of Mexico, site of the disastrous BP oil spill of 2010.

The good news is that it could take years to implement, maybe more years than the Trump Administration has in office–four or less. The Interior Department will have to  conduct a review. And industry demand for more oil leases is obviously low these days.

* Troubling that Trump would have invited Philippine thug-President  Rodrigo Duterte for a White House visit. No less concerning is that he was winging it. Both the State Department and the National Security Council were caught off guard by Trump’s invite. But maybe he ran it by Jared and Ivanka–close enough.

* Speaking of winging, hardly reassuring to hear that Nikki Haley, the outspoken U.S. ambassador to the U.N., has largely been going it alone when commenting on foreign policy issues. From military strikes on Syria to sanctions against Russia.

Now we learn that the State Department officially frowns on the practice and has finally told Halley’s aides to make sure to clear her public remarks with Washington first. It’s beyond disturbing that this wasn’t hashed out during the transition period, a likely reflection of the foreign-policy and federal-government inexperience of both Halley and the man who has been ceding her the spotlight, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

* The president recently referred to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as a “smart cookie” and “under the right circumstances” would be “honored” to meet with him. Maybe Trump likes the prospective juxtaposition. Next to the fat kid with a bad haircut, he looks nearly normal.

* We know political partisanship is beyond rancor right now, and some partisans and media sources are admonishing us for not being more open minded. Cable news and online forums are, as we know, often off the charts. It’s what they do. Divide and go bonkers. But, for the fun of it, I compared the takes on the Trump tax plan by the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, two establishment pillars, albeit ideologically different. But not exactly BuzzFeed and Breitbart.

“The skimpy, one-page tax proposal his administration released Wednesday is, by any historical standard, a laughable stunt by a gang of plutocrats looking to enrich themselves at the expense of the country’s future.”–NYT.

“The White House rolled out its tax principles, investing new energy in the first serious reform debate in 30 years.”–WSJ.

* Like most prognosticators, statistician/odds-maker Nate Silver, of the well-regarded FiveThirtyEight.com, didn’t pick the winner last November. And as with many pundits, he hasn’t gotten over it. He’s still tweeting that FBI Director James Comey cost Hillary Clinton the presidency. “It’s a fairly open-and-shut case,” he says.

There’s a really good chance he’s 100 percent correct.

A shout-out–really–to the Florida Democratic Party for some good news. The FDP is bringing in former Vice President Joe Biden to be the keynote speaker next month (June 17) at its annual Leadership Blue Gala in Hollywood. The LBG is helping Florida Dems in their efforts to inject more blue into the Sunshine State in 2018. And landing the outspoken Biden, one of the few Dems who can rally a crowd and gin up a base, is a coup. Moreover, if Biden wants to be a presidential player in 2020, this is a place to be.

Notable signage at the recent People’s Climate March in Washington:

*”There is no Planet B.”

*”May the forest be with you.”

* And, yes, “Make Earth Great Again!”

* House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., created quite the stir by going to the White House and the media before addressing his committee colleagues on that transition-period, “incidental surveillance” revelation involving President Trump and associates. For the record, Nunes’ committee is investigating allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 elections. It’s also looking into suspected links between Trump aides and the Kremlin.

So, Nunes apologized to his fellow committee members for having briefed Trump and the media first. For running interference for Trump, instead of just running his committee impartially.

In effect, Nunes, a former Trump-campaign insider, was adhering to a maxim that transcends partisan politics. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.

* For those still rationalizing the upside of having a “businessman” in the White House, this just in. Running a private family brand, starring in a TV reality show, ignoring ethics, negotiating from leverage that includes employing bankruptcy laws and never being accountable to shareholders is hardly the prototype.

* For obvious reasons, an otherwise incongruous Donald Trump-Richard Nixon comparison is now part of our political palaver. While it’s hardly precise, it’s still worth noting.

Trump’s first two months have been an exercise in controversy, ineptitude, embarrassment and existential concern. From health care, trade agreements and treaty obligations to intimations of more shoes dropping from that Russian centipede. Some observers, typically partisans but not exclusively so, are wondering if a Trump administration can make it literally through a whole 4-year term. Others scoff at such impeachment or “Seven Days in May” scenarios.

Nixon, of course, had his epically historic, Watergate-fueled resignation. But that was then–and this is decidedly not on numerous levels.

But there is this. Nixon was eminently qualified, even if dark and conspiratorial, for the office of president. He was smart, well-informed, politically pragmatic and experienced on matters both domestic and international. He was a prominent player–from Congress to the vice presidency to a presidential re-election–for a generation. He was savvy and calculated and surrounded himself with talented, if tainted, aides who were no mere sycophants. And, yet, he was forced out of office.

Trump, however, is unconscionably uninformed, temperamentally unhinged and surrounded by toadies, family and a scary deconstructionist. If past is any kind of prologue, I’d be checking Nate Silver to see what the over/under is on Trump’s staying power.

* Those were some weird, recorded optics–video and AP photos–on display in Washington in that recent meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Donald Trump. Insiders were not shocked.

As a candidate, Trump ridiculed his counterpart for “ruining” Germany with her immigrant-friendly policies. He even hammered Hillary Clinton for wanting to be “America’s Angela Merkel,” pantsuit and all. He also was less than engaging as a host–exemplified in awkward, handshake aversion.

Merkel looked the part of reluctant participant. And you know she misses Barack Obama, no matter what Edward Snowden said was done to her phone.

It was also beyond ironic as to which country’s 21st century leader represents scapegoating, xenophobic authoritarianism.

* No matter how–and how many times–it gets spun for security purposes, how do you reasonably–or sanely–go about proposing significant cuts in the COAST Guard while implementing plans to build an obscenely expensive, campaign-promised wall across the U.S.-Mexican border?

* Maybe it’s just another day at the Trumpian office, but when key presidential surrogates/policy meisters take their “America First” act overseas, foreign counterparts get a quick dose of how “Make America Great Again” is actually playing out early on. Witness how the getting-to-know-you mission of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin went in his sortie to the Group of 20 meeting in Germany.

It was hardly coincidental that the Group’s final communiqué unprecedentedly didn’t even mention “open trade” nor the usual repudiations of “protectionism.” Moreover, at US insistence, there was no formal “pledge” to observe the Paris accords on climate change.

Note to Trump administration: Be careful what you clamor for.

* Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley isn’t given to melodramatic, partisan sound bites. So when he assessed the early chaos and Russian subplots overwhelming the Trump Administration’s first two months, observers duly noted his language.

“There’s a smell of treason in the air,” opined Brinkley. “Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president? It would have been a mind-boggling event.”

This won’t end well.

* If you’re looking for some compelling context for today’s geopolitical world and this American presidency, check out Showtime’s (2012) production of Oliver Stone’s “The Untold History of the United States” that is streaming on Netflix. It’s a 12-part primer on how the stage was set for the U.S. to become a global power–from William McKinley to Barack Obama. Of course Stone can get preachy, but he reins most of it in. He’s still not Michael Moore.

Among the reflective postscripts: Suppose Henry Wallace had stayed on the Roosevelt ticket–and there were no Truman presidency. Intriguing. And haunting.

* Wouldn’t it be a lot less awkward to work with North Korea and Iran if the U.S. were not the only country in history to have actually used a nuclear weapon?

For all the talk of immigrants and Statue of Liberty ideals, here’s an update of note. The country that actually accounted for the most U.S. asylum requests last year was Venezuela. More than 18,000.

As we’ve been noticing, various media, including our own regional daily, have featured right-of-center columnists making the case that too many of us have been remiss in not giving the Trump Administration a chance. It actually means well, however untraditional, unprepared, untruthful and unnerving it has seemed these first six weeks.

We have to “come together” is the common-purpose theme. We have to be country first. We have to be fair. Agreed. And, BTW, who the hell wouldn’t want to be great again?  We’re being encouraged to view Trump through a less judgmental lens. In short, we should see a pathologically narcissistic, existential threat no differently than we would see a Barack Obama or a Mitt Romney. This gives disingenuous a bad name.

But let’s give President Trump his due. He’s on the right, make that arguably correct, side of some important issues. But he apparently gets no credit beyond his fan base, just because his modus operandi is too off-putting to too many. Here are a couple.

First, “radical Islamic terrorism” is neither inaccurate nor offensively inclusive. It’s accurate and specific. But in the name of prioritizing security, vetting immigrants and working to defeat jihadists, do we have to be insensitive, stupid, illegal and, ultimately, counterproductive in the process?

Do we have to traffic in paramilitary-whispering rhetoric and heavy-handed policies?  Do we have to alienate both global and local Muslim communities whose help we obviously need?

Second, we need some kind of working relationship with Russia. It’s been a priority of Trump’s since the primaries, and he’s not wrong. Russia is, like it or not, the other major nuclear power in the world. It is, however diminished since its Soviet days, still an important global player. It is a permanent member of the United Nation’s Security Council. And, yes, it is, alas, run by a corrupt, oligarch-sniffing, former KGB punk.

But, yes, you do have to talk to your adversaries–such as Russia–and prevent them from morphing into mortal enemies. We have the worst kind of enemy–unhinged religious zealots looking for apocalyptic weapons of mass destruction–in common. And you have to work with Russia on a range of other common causes–from NATO encroachment to weapons treaties to environmental issues. There was a reason why Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had wanted that much-criticized re-set button with Russia.

Trump is right to want Russia as a practicable partner. But he was alarmingly wrong to have countenanced the past Russian-related affiliations of former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. And he’s beyond wrong to have celebrated and encouraged WikiLeaks and allowed his campaign to play election politics with Kremlin-friendly operatives. And it’s been unconscionable to have accused former President Obama of wire-tapping him. He classlessly called Obama a “bad (or sick) guy.” We won’t even get into what leverage that Russian “dossier” might contain.