Tag: Donald Trump

Trump and Bolton Undermine The International Criminal Court

Many Americans and others around the world have been following with great concern the irrational statements and destructive decisions made by Pres. Trump ever since his election.

Some of the President’s policies on national and international issues have made the United States the laughing stock of the world. The latest such example is the announcement by the White House National Security Adviser John Bolton that the United States will not cooperate with the International Criminal Court; will not allow the Court’s judges to travel to the United States; will sanction their funds in American banks; and prosecute them in U.S. courts.

According to Wikipedia, “the International Criminal Court (ICC) is an intergovernmental organization and international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. The ICC has the jurisdiction to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. The ICC is intended to complement existing national judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer situations to the Court. The ICC began functioning on 1 July 2002, the date that the Rome Statute entered into force. The Rome Statute is a multilateral treaty which serves as the ICC’s foundational and governing document. States which become party to the Rome Statute, for example, by ratifying it, become member states of the ICC. Currently, there are 123 states which are party to the Rome Statute and therefore members of the ICC.”

John Bolton, the National Security Adviser of Pres. Trump, in a highly critical speech on Sept. 10, 2018, rejected the jurisdiction of the ICC, especially in cases involving accusations against the United States and its allies, particularly Israel.

Bolton and his boss were incensed by ICC’s investigation of possible crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and charges brought by the Palestinian National Authority against Israel. To prevent any legal action against American forces, the United States has signed binding agreements with 100 countries not to surrender any U.S. personnel to the ICC. Furthermore, the United States shut down the representative office of Palestine in Washington, D.C., because of the latter’s intention to file charges at the ICC for alleged Israeli violations. This comes on the heels of the White House decision to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, thus eliminating all possibility for the United States to serve as an honest broker between the Palestinian Authorities and Israel.

Bolton gave five reasons for the U.S. refusal to cooperate with the ICC:

The first reason is Bolton’s claim that the ICC “threatens American sovereignty and US national security interests. The prosecutor in The Hague claims essentially unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute individuals, regardless of whether their countries have acceded to the Rome Statute.” Bolton’s claim is not accurate. First, all international treaties ratified by the United States supersede national sovereignty, such as the Genocide Convention and many others. Secondly, the ICC has jurisdiction over U.S. citizens only in cases where the U.N. Security Council authorizes the Court to do so. While the United States is not a member of the ICC, it is a Permanent Member of the U.N. Security Council and as such it has veto power over its decisions. Thirdly, the ICC does not get involved in cases where the home country takes legal action against its own citizens.

Bolton’s second objection is that “the International Criminal Court claims jurisdiction over crimes that have disputed and ambiguous definitions, exacerbating the court’s unfettered powers.” Bolton is concerned that ICC judges would bring charges against the United States, in cases such as the U.S. bombing of Syria in 2017 for its alleged use of chemical weapons. As in any other trial, if the evidence proves that the United States acted illegally, there should be an appropriate verdict. No country is above international law. The U.S. is already protected from such Court actions as a non-member of the ICC. It is ironic that the United States, after preaching for decades to the rest of the world about upholding law and order, is now flouting the very principles that America was founded on!

Bolton’s third concern is that “the International Criminal Court fails in its fundamental objective to deter and punish atrocity crimes. Since its 2002 inception, the court has spent over $1.5 billion while attaining only eight convictions.” Contrary to Bolton’s assertion, the eight convictions prove that the Court is very deliberate in its judgments and does not pursue every little case around the world, allowing member states to charge their own accused citizens.

Bolton’s fourth complaint is that “the International Criminal Court is superfluous, given that domestic US judicial systems already hold American citizens to the highest legal and ethical standards.” This is an easily dismissible issue. If the ICC finds that U.S. courts have dealt with a particular crime, it will not interfere. The ICC is a court of last resort. This is one of ICC’s main guidelines.

Bolton’s fifth criticism is that “the International Criminal Court’s authority has been sharply criticized and rejected by most of the world. Today, more than 70 nations…are not members of the ICC.” While 70 countries are not yet members of ICC, 123 countries are members! Over time, more nations will join the ICC, as is the case with other international conventions.

Rather than argue against the rule of law, the United States should be the first to join such international legal institutions. By rejecting the ICC and considering it to be “dead,” as Bolton described it, the United States is simply encouraging the impunity of brutal regimes and dictators around the world!

September 18, 2018
Planning for the Post-Trump Wreckage
When the president eventually exits the White House, the rest of us will quickly have to make sense of the world he’s left behind.

By Stephen M. Walt

| August 30, 2018, 1:23 PM

Donald Trump speaks during an event to announces a grant for drug-free communities support program, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on August 29, 2018. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images)

One of the many unfortunate consequences of U.S. President Donald Trump’s cavalier, corrupt, and capricious handling of foreign policy is that it discourages farsighted thinking about the global agenda. Even worse, it is gradually undermining the institutional capacity the United States will need to deal with that agenda. To a first approximation, the people who are most alarmed by his actions (and I include myself among them) are spending a lot of their time circling the wagons and trying to minimize the damage that he and his minions do while in office. They are like parents trying frantically to corral a rambunctious toddler (hat tip to Dan Drezner) who is running amok through a china shop: All the attention is on saving as much of the crockery as possible, and nobody has any time to think about what they’ll do once the kid has finished smashing things.

It’s understandable that people are trapped in a reactive mode, because Trump’s genius is his ability to make nearly everything all about him and to focus attention on whatever his latest outrageous antic is. What other president could or would make himself the center of attention when a prominent senator died or express his disagreement with an important allied leader by tossing candy at her? Trump may be terrible at running the government, but his ability to command attention through outrageous behavior makes Madonna look like an amateur.

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Yet we should resist the urge to remain in a defensive crouch. Yes, there’s a lot of damage being done these days, and resisting Trump’s worst impulses is important. But there are plenty of problems out there that will require attention in the not-too-distant future, and where the appropriate solutions aren’t immediately obvious. Careful and creative thought will be needed to figure out an appropriate destination and then to chart a course to get there. It is not too soon, therefore, for foreign-policy mavens to start thinking about the post-Trump world, not simply to restore the pre-Trump status quo but in order to figure out arrangements that acknowledge new realities and are appropriate for the conditions we will face in the future.

No doubt each of you has your own list of priorities, but for what it’s worth, here are a few of mine.

#1: The Architecture of Great Power Politics

About the Author

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. @stephenwalt

When he ran for president back in 1992, Bill Clinton once declared that “the cynical calculus of pure power politics simply does not compute. It is ill-suited to a new era.” He was expressing the widespread belief (pious hope?) that humanity had turned a corner at the end of the Cold War, and that the old logic of great power rivalry was now behind us. He was dead wrong, alas, and great power politics are now back with a vengeance.

But the form and intensity of that rivalry remains open, and the nature of relations among today’s great powers needs to be shaped through farsighted diplomatic action. Will the United States disengage and let Europe and Asia (mostly) go their own way? Will the United States, its NATO allies, and Japan link up with others to contain Russia, China, and their various regional partners? Should the United States make a concerted effort to drive a wedge between Moscow and Beijing, perhaps by trying to work out an agreement on Ukraine and promoting a security architecture for Europe and Russia that reduces each side’s fears? Where will countries like India fit into the constellation of great powers, and where should the United States want it to be?

It is all well and good to obsess about “saving NATO” or “preserving a liberal order,” but those short-term, reactive goals do not eliminate the need to think hard about what sort of great power relations are realistic and desirable in the decades ahead. At key moments in world history—such as 1815, 1870, 1919, 1945, and 1993—the leaders of the great powers had to imagine and then try to implement visions of great power politics designed to preserve key interests, ideally without (much) resort to force. They were sometimes successful; at other key moments, they failed miserably. The problem cannot be avoided, but we are more likely to end up with arrangements we like if we start thinking through the possibilities now.

#2: The Brave New World of Cyber:

I’m the first to admit that I didn’t foresee all of the ways that digitalization, social media, and other aspects of the cyber-world would shape both international and domestic politics. Sure, there’s been a lot of hype and threat inflation about cybersecurity, cyberwar, and cyber-everything else, but in 2018 it’s impossible to deny that these issues are affecting us all in pretty far-reaching ways. Indeed, even the suspicion that bad guys are using the internet to manipulate politics can have effects all on its own.

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Instead of moving energetically to address these issues, however, Trump fired the White House cybersecurity coordinator and eliminated the position, repeatedly denied that anybody interfered in the 2018 election, and now is tweeting out accusations that Google is biased against him. Instead of developing a coherent U.S. policy and trying to negotiate an international code of conduct that might mitigate these problems, he’s kicking the can down the road.

But does anyone believe these issues will simply disappear on their own? Surely not. Which means more farsighted people will have to start developing policies that can preserve the benefits of the digital revolution while protecting us from its dark downside.

#3: New Institutions for the World Economy

It is now obvious that contemporary globalization did not deliver as promised for millions of people—though it did have significant benefits for the Asian middle class and the global 1 percent—and that the main institutions set up to manage global trade and investment need serious rethinking. This is partly because some countries (e.g., China) have complied poorly with some of the rules, though no country’s track record is perfect, and because unfettered globalization did not allow individual countries to tailor arrangements in order to support key cultural or national priorities.

This is not my area of expertise, and I’m not going to offer any detailed advice on what should be done. For what it’s worth, I find my colleague Dani Rodrik’s arguments on allowing nations greater autonomy within the global trading and investment order, so that their participation does not produce wrenching social dislocations at home, convincing. Less globalization might be more, therefore, but less globalization does not mean zero.

As near as I can tell, the Trump administration’s approach to these issues has been to use U.S. economic leverage to bully other countries into making minor economic concessions, which Trump can then hail as the “beautiful” new trade deals that he promised back in 2016. That’s what happened with South Korea and what appears to be happening with NAFTA. But what’s missing, at least so far, is any attempt to develop a larger set of institutions or arrangements that would safeguard the wealth-enhancing elements of (mostly) open trade and avoid both the obvious costs of a trade war and the social turmoil of hyper-globalization. Again, it’s not my field, but I sure hope Dani isn’t the only person thinking about what a new global economic order should look like.

#4: Whither the Middle East?

If the architecture of great power politics is now uncertain and will require creative diplomacy to adapt to and shape, that goes double in the troubled Middle East. Thus far, the Trump administration has mostly doubled down on supporting America’s longtime Middle East partners: giving a free hand to Israeli expansionism, backing Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s military dictatorship in Egypt, and encouraging Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious domestic reforms and his increasingly reckless regional behavior (most notably and tragically in Yemen), as well as ramping up pressure on America’s perennial bête noire, Iran. Trump has also stumbled into a pissing contest with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, but Erdogan is at least as prickly and desperate for scapegoats as Trump himself, and a cynic might argue that the two leaders deserve each other.

Although it’s possible that National Security Advisor John Bolton will still get the war with Iran that he has long favored, the bigger questions are what the U.S. role in the region will be over the longer term and how it will deal with problems that are going to come home to roost eventually. Former Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all openly backed a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians, for example, and each tried to bring it about in their own not-very-effective fashion. The two-state solution is now on life support if not completely dead, however, which raises the obvious question: If “two states for two peoples” is impossible, then what is does the United States support? Does it believe Israel should become a one-state democracy, with full political rights for all inhabitants, including the Palestinians who are now under strict Israeli control and denied political rights? Do Americans think those Palestinians should be kept in a state of permanent subjugation (aka apartheid)? Is the United States in favor of Israel expelling them to some other country? Nobody really wants to think about awkward questions such as these, let alone answer them, but Trump’s successors are going to get asked. Might be a good idea to start formulating a response.

And that’s just one issue. The United States will also need to figure out if it wants to continue its (mostly futile) efforts to mold local politics all over the region or revert back to the strategy of “offshore balancing” that it employed there from 1945 to roughly 1991. Should it strive for a modus vivendi with Iran—in the service of maximizing U.S. leverage and maintaining a regional balance of power—or continue to flirt with regime change? And it is worth asking if the Middle East is even as vital a region as it once was, given the shale gas revolution back in the United States, the imperative to reduce fossil fuel consumption, and the rising strategic importance of Asia?

#5: Rebuilding Foreign Policy Capacity and Expertise

Unfortunately, the United States will be grappling with all of these problems with a severely depleted foreign-policy capacity. The travails of the State Department are well known, but there has also been exceptionally high turnover among key Trump aides and a general erosion of nonpartisan experience and expertise throughout the government. Trump’s repeated attacks on the intelligence agencies and his efforts to politicize the civil service aren’t helping either. Lord knows I’m critical of the “Blob” and its tendency not to hold itself accountable and to stick with strategies that aren’t working, but the answer is a better foreign-policy establishment, not amateur hour.

Accordingly, planning for a post-Trump world will also require a sustained effort to rebuild the institutional and administrative capacity for an effective foreign policy. Having an effective and professional civil and foreign service is critical in a system such as America’s, because so many top jobs get replaced whenever the White House changes hands, and many senior officials take months if not years to be nominated and confirmed. Moreover, a lot of them stay in their posts for only a year or two, creating further disarray and churn within the government. Add to that America’s odd practice of letting big campaign donors serve in important diplomatic posts or management positions, and you have a recipe for trouble.

This problem wouldn’t be a big issue if the United States had modest foreign-policy goals, but that is hardly the case. Instead, it is trying to run the world with perhaps the most disorganized and dysfunctional system imaginable. Accordingly, farsighted patriots need to start planning how to restore expertise, analytic capacity, and accountability now, so that this process can begin swiftly once Trump is gone.

The list presented here is far from complete, and it’s easy to think of other issues (e.g., climate change, proliferation, migration, etc.) where imaginative thinking is going to be needed. But my central point remains: Preserving the status quo against Trump’s wrecking operation is not enough. Instead of just playing defense, his critics need to start thinking about the positive goals they intend to pursue once he’s left the political stage. And there’s an added benefit in this course of action: The most obvious way to convince Americans that Trump’s policies are mistaken is to show them a better alternative.

Stephen M. Walt is the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University. @stephenwalt

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August 31, 2018
Top Aide to Kim Jong-un Is Bound for U.S., Trump Says

North Korea’s top nuclear weapons negotiator was headed for New York on Tuesday and expected to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo as officials race to settle on an agenda for a June 12 summit meeting between the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and President Trump in Singapore.

Mr. Trump said on Twitter that Kim Yong-chol, one of the most trusted aides to the North’s leader and a former intelligence chief, was “heading now to New York.” In a reference to the moves made since he canceled the on-again-off-again summit meeting, the president added, “Solid response to my letter, thank you!”

The former intelligence chief, who is 72, has been at the side of the North Korean leader, 34, during a recent whirl of diplomacy, meeting with South Koreans in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the peninsula and with the Chinese.

Mr. Kim’s trip to the United States starts the most important negotiating track leading up to the summit meeting. Over the weekend, a team of American diplomats met with North Korean officials in the Demilitarized Zone, and White House logistics experts have been talking with North Koreans in Singapore about arrangements for the leaders’ meeting there.

But a trip to the United States by Kim Yong-chol — who has served the three leaders of the Kim dynasty that has ruled the North since 1945 — signaled that negotiations were reaching a critical point.

Mr. Kim would be the highest-ranking North Korean official to visit the United States since 2000, when Vice Marshal Jo Myong-rok invited President Bill Clinton to Pyongyang, with the prospect of sealing an agreement on curbing the North’s missiles. It never came to fruition.

A diplomat in Beijing, where Mr. Kim stopped overnight Tuesday, said it was not immediately clear whether the negotiator would meet with the Chinese again before going on to New York, where he is expected to arrive on Wednesday.

China’s Foreign Ministry would not confirm the former spymaster’s presence in Beijing, even though video footage showed him at the airport after his arrival from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

In recent weeks, China and the United States have been vying for the attention of Kim Jong-un, with Mr. Trump accusing China of contributing to a toughened North Korean stance on denuclearization after the North Korean and Chinese leaders met this month.

If the former spy chief met with senior Chinese officials in Beijing, he might risk angering Mr. Trump again, diplomats said. His stop in Beijing could also be related to his presence on a sanctions list that bars him from entering the United States.

An American diplomat said a waiver would have to be granted for such an individual to enter the United States, although it was likely one would automatically be given under extraordinary circumstances like these.

Mr. Kim was probably headed to New York, where North Korea has a mission to the United Nations, rather than to Washington because it was easier for him to get a visa there, another American diplomat said. North Korean diplomats and officials are not allowed to travel more than a few miles outside New York City.

Kim Yong-chol has already met Mr. Pompeo twice in Pyongyang. On the second visit, Mr. Pompeo expected to come away with a set of details for the Singapore summit meeting relating to the denuclearization of the North, but failed to do so. After the second meeting this month, Mr. Pompeo returned to Washington with three Americans who had been detained in North Korea.

In his most recent meeting with Mr. Pompeo, Mr. Kim struck a defiant tone, saying at a luncheon that North Korea’s willingness to enter into talks was “not a result of sanctions that have been imposed from the outside.” But he reminded the visiting Americans that North Korea intended to focus “all efforts into economic progress in our country.”

Mr. Kim has served as a senior manager of the North’s intelligence operations for nearly 30 years, according to the website North Korea Leadership Watch.

Mr. Kim’s rare combination of senior positions in the North’s highly stratified political and military apparatus makes him “one of the most powerful figures in North Korea,” it said.

He is also one of the longest serving senior officials of the Kim dynasty. Mr. Kim was involved in the 1990s in one of the earliest efforts to limit the North’s nuclear weapons. According to an account in “The Two Koreas,” by Don Oberdorfer and Robert Carlin, Mr. Kim was the toughest of negotiators on an accord that eventually failed in 1992.

At the time, Mr. Kim accused a South Korean diplomat of composing 90 percent of the language in the accord, it says, quoting him as saying, “This is your agreement, not our agreement.”

In the mid-2000s, he was assigned as head of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, the North’s spy agency, and paid particular attention to operations against South Korea. When he was chief of the North’s intelligence service in 2010, South Korea accused him of being responsible for blowing up a South Korean Navy vessel, killing 46 sailors. Five months later, the United States Treasury put Mr. Kim on the sanctions list.

In February, Mr. Kim was sent to the closing ceremony of the Winter Olympics in South Korea. He appeared in photographs seated behind Ivanka Trump, a stern expression on his face.

Over the past few months, the United States and North Korea have come closer than ever to holding the first summit meeting of the countries’ leaders. In March, Mr. Trump surprised many people when he accepted Kim Jong-un’s invitation to meet, which was relayed through South Korean envoys. But last Thursday in a letter to the North Korean leader, Mr. Trump abruptly canceled the meeting.

He then changed course again on Friday, saying that the meeting might take place as scheduled. Officials from the United States and North Korea have since started a whirlwind of working-level diplomacy to try to narrow a gap over how to denuclearize the North and salvage the planned meeting.

May 29, 2018
Trump: The Un-American President

President Trump with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada at the White House last year.CreditDoug Mills The New York Times

By Charles M. Blow

“I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know … I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ ”

That, as reported by The Washington Post, was Donald Trump boasting during a private fund-raising dinner about lying to Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, our northern neighbor and closest ally.

When caught in the lie, Trump did what Trump does: Repeats the lie, louder, stronger, and more stridently.

After the lie was reported, Trump tweeted:

“We do have a Trade Deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries (some of them massive). P.M. Justin Trudeau of Canada, a very good guy, doesn’t like saying that Canada has a Surplus vs. the U.S. (negotiating), but they do … they almost all do … and that’s how I know!”

By the way, here is PolitiFact’s fact-check of Trump’s claim:

“In 2017, the United States had a $23.2 billion deficit with Canada in goods. In other words, the United States in 2017 bought more goods from Canada than Canada bought from the United States.

However, the United States had a $25.9 billion surplus with Canada in services — and that was enough to overcome that deficit and turn the overall balance of trade into a $2.8 billion surplus for the United States in 2017. The same pattern occurred in 2016.”

It bears repeating that Donald Trump is a pathological, unrepentant liar. We must state this truth for as long as he revels in untruth.

But there is something about the nakedness of this confession, the brazenness of it, the cavalier-ness, that still has the ability to shock.

First, why does the president of the United States not know whether we have a trade surplus or deficit with Canada? A pillar of his campaign was to renegotiate Nafta. Surely he understood the basic fundamentals before making wild accusations and unrealistic promises, right? Wrong.

Trump’s recalling of the story suggested that he was somehow overpowering and outmaneuvering Trudeau, free to best him because he was unencumbered by an allegiance to the truth.

But in fact, the story makes Trump look small and ignorant and unprincipled.

Lying to your friends and then bragging behind their backs that you lied to them is the quickest way to poison a friendship.

This is lying for sport, for the thrill of it, because you can and feel that there is no penalty for it.

Our relationship with our allies around the world depends on some degree of mutual trust and respect. What must they think when they watch Trump demolish those diplomatic tenets? How are international agreements supposed to be negotiated when one party is a proven, prolific liar?

We have no idea just how damaged the American brand has become under Trump.

As a June 2017 Pew Research Center report pointed out:

“Although he has only been in office a few months, Donald Trump’s presidency has had a major impact on how the world sees the United States. Trump and many of his key policies are broadly unpopular around the globe, and ratings for the U.S. have declined steeply in many nations.”

The report continued:

“According to a new Pew Research Center survey spanning 37 nations, a median of just 22 percent has confidence in Trump to do the right thing when it comes to international affairs. This stands in contrast to the final years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when a median of 64 percent expressed confidence in Trump’s predecessor to direct America’s role in the world.”

Surely, some may think this lie to Trudeau is a small matter, particularly in light of the waves of Trump chaos and scandal that wash over us several times a day.

But it is this damaging of truth, this injuring of American identity, this undercutting of American credibility that will be the hardest to reverse.

One of Trump’s most lasting legacies will likely be the damage he’s doing to the fundamental idea that truth matters.

The world is watching, and that includes the world’s children, some of whom will register him as their first American president. How will they regard this absence from world leadership that Trump is enacting? Will they grow up repulsed by it? Most hopefully will. But there will undoubtedly be others that draw a different lesson from the Trump philosophy: Create your own reality; populate it with “facts” of your own creation; use lying as a tactic; remember that strict adherence to truth is a moral barrier and morality is a burden.

This is what this man is projecting: A debauched character and a hollow place where integrity should exist.

Rather than preserving the nobility of the presidency, he is debasing it. Rather than burnishing the image of America, he is tarnishing it.

It is an awful fact that the most powerful man in America may also represent the worst of America. In a way, Trump is the un-American president.

I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter (@CharlesMBlow), or email me at [email protected].

Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

A version of this article appears in print on March 19, 2018, on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump: The Un-American President.

Charles M. Blow

March 30, 2018
Donald Trump: Man at War

By Charles M. Blow
As Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, tweeted Friday:

“@realDonaldTrump is now set for war on 3 fronts: political vs Bob Mueller, economic vs China/others on trade, and actual vs. Iran and/or North Korea. This is the most perilous moment in modern American history — and it has been largely brought about by ourselves, not by events.”

I agree fully with this assessment.

Some have viewed President Trump’s recent moves as a sign of rising self-assuredness in the man.

I see quite the opposite. I see a man growing increasingly irascible as his sense of desperation surges. The world is closing in on Trump and he is in an existential fight for his own survival.

This is precisely what makes him so dangerous: As the personal threat to him grows, his threat to the country grows. The power of the American presidency is an awesome power, and Trump will harness and deploy it all as guard and guarantee against his own demise.

Add to his sense of panic his compounding emotional and psychological liabilities: He has an inflated view of his own skills, talents and expertise. He knows only a fraction of what he has convinced himself that he knows.

He prefers casual conversation to literary examination, opting to listen rather than to read, which is both a sign of a severely compromised and restrained intellect and an astounding arrogance about one’s information absorption.

While pundits mull whether the cloud of chaos Trump keeps swirling around him is simple incompetence or strategic plotting, The New York Times reported Friday:

“Aides said there was no grand strategy to the president’s actions, and that he got up each morning this week not knowing what he would do. Much as he did as a New York businessman at Trump Tower, Mr. Trump watched television, reacted to what he saw on television and then reacted to the reaction.”

This is all gut and instinct. This is all reactionary emoting by a man of poor character, one addicted to affirmation. He desperately needs to be the king-of-every-hill he sees in the mirror: He was the ladies’ man, businessman, smartest man, toughest man. There was nothing beyond him, and he didn’t have to follow the rules, he only had to follow his instincts.

But Washington politics is a long way from New York City real estate. Wrangling Senate votes is a long way from prowling for playmates. This is the big leagues and this little man is feeling the stress and strain of

Even if he can’t be good, he at least wants to look good, to fake it to try to make it. This may be one of the reasons he is inviting so many television personalities into his cabinet.

This is all just window dressing. Trump is truly in the cross hairs, and he knows it.

Just as he is going to war on three fronts, he is being attacked on three fronts.

The Robert Mueller investigation is bearing down on him as an inevitable in-person interview with Trump — and all of its potential pitfalls — draws nearer. I have resisted predictions about what could come of the investigation because it would be little more than conjecture. Only Mueller knows what Mueller knows. But, it appears to me that the president is surely acting like a guilty man, or at least someone trying to shield another who is guilty.

Then there is the porn star, the playmate and the reality star: Three women currently in litigation over sexual contact with Trump — two admittedly consensual and one allegedly not. The most tantalizing and threatening of the three is the case with porn star Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels. Daniels and her attorney, as well as language in the nondisclosure agreement that she signed, suggests that she has some compromising written and photographic evidence about her encounters with Trump.

Furthermore, in Daniels, Trump seems to have met his match as an internet troll. When someone on Twitter asked Clifford, “What snack foods do you recommend for watching you on “60 Minutes” tomorrow night? Nachos and wings feel so January, you know?” Clifford responded: “Tacos and mini corndogs just seems so right … and yet, so wrong. I believe the more traditional choice is popcorn, however.”

Yes, the subtext of that tweet is exactly what you think it is. Note to self: Never pick a fight with a porn star.

And now with the massive March For Our Lives, we see that going into the midterms not only are black voters and suburban white women energized against this president and his congressional protectors, so are young people who feel betrayed, particularly on the issue of gun control, by politicians beholden to the N.R.A.

Trump talked big about standing up to the N.R.A., and then summarily caved to the N.R.A.

If this surge of enthusiasm leads to Democrats flipping the House — and the long shot, the Senate — and something comes of the Mueller investigation or the women’s lawsuits, you can rest assured that impeachment proceedings will be in the offing. This is why Trump is going to war.

I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter (@CharlesMBlow), or email me at [email protected].

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A version of this article appears in print on March 26, 2018, on Page A22 of the New York edition with the headline: Donald Trump: Man at War. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper |

Charles M. Blow
Politics, public opinion and social justice.

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Melania Knew

March 30, 2018
TAGS (Trump Armenian Genocide Statement). By Garen Yegparian

TAGS (Trump Armenian Genocide Statement)

By Garen Yegparian on March 14, 2018

Trump Armenian Genocide Statement—that’s what TAGS stands for. Last year, when he had his first chance to do right on the matter of the Armenian Genocide, U.S. President Donald Trump gave us the same mealy-mouthed meaninglessness we had gotten accustomed to from his immediate predecessors in that office.

Donald Trump (Photo: Gage Skidmore)

We are about six weeks out from proclamation/resolution/statement (PRS) season when it comes to the annual spike in intensity of genocide recognition efforts, so it is very timely to discuss what our expectations of Trump are or should be. It seems to me there are two aspects to consider.

First, let’s address how we should approach heads of state and governments when it comes to Armenian Genocide recognition. It strikes me that should adopt a “one chance” policy. The first April that person is in office, s/he should be expected to make an appropriate statement, including the word “genocide” coupled with relevant, implementable, policy that will guide the course of that country. Anything less, even if it includes the word “genocide” is far too little, too late. The time for such platitudes is past. Armenians’ expectations are far more hard-nosed now. We want something that will produce real results, not just good feelings. It should be permanent in its effect, that is, it should not require annual renewal. Otherwise, we will forever be in the position of the proverbial dog chasing its tail. This does not mean we should sever relations with an executive-office-holder who fails to deliver on our expectations. Rather, we should appropriately criticize her/him and simply focus on other issues of Armenian concern where cooperation is possible. Repeatedly groveling for a “handout” when one can reasonably expect no benefit is simply humiliating.

In Trump’s case, since this “one chance” rule was not in place last year, we should make every effort to elicit an appropriate utterance from him in 2018. Turkey’s crescendoing arrogance and troublemaking might provide sufficient impetus to move the White House’s various entrenched bureaucracies to reduce or eliminate their opposition to a proper Genocide PRS, as described in the previous paragraph. Congressmember Adam Schiff makes this argument in his piece Turkey’s Descent into Authoritarianism published a little over two weeks ago.

Another interesting argument is made by Robert M. Morgenthau, the famous Ambassador Morgenthau’s grandson, in a Wall Street Journal piece from late January titled Will Trump Tell the Truth About the Armenian Genocide? He thinks that because Trump is so unconventional, he just might be willing to rock the boat enough to give proper recognition to the Genocide. Of course this would still be insufficient based on my requirements for something results, rather than feelings, oriented. It is something worth thinking about.

But, let’s say that Trump is willing to go all the way, recognize and change policy, give appropriate marching orders to the Departments of Defense and State. The question becomes, do we, Armenians, want that action to come from someone like Trump?

Why would this question even arise? Trump’s inconsistency, erraticness, thoughtlessness, impulsiveness, intellectual-rigorlessness, vacuousness, and just plain inappropriate-for-the-presidency personality could easily devalue, render meaningless, any Genocide related action or position he may take. He is not even like Reagan, who at least had some political experience and a tolerable presidential bearing and mien. That’s why Reagan’s 1981 statement (inserted by his speechwriter, Ken Khachigian, after getting appropriate clearances, as recently documented by Peter Musurlian in an interview with him) carried weight then and still does now.

Nevertheless, I think it would be a good thing if he were to take action, but especially because of who he is, it becomes doubly important that what he does meets the “practicality” requirements I set forth above.

All the Armenians who voted for him (and heck, everyone else, too) should engage in a massive letter writing/e-mailing/tweeting campaign urging Donald Trump to properly characterize the Genocide and direct that U.S. policy reflect it.

March 15, 2018