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The Screaming Moderate

My president right or wrong?

10/30/2019

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A couple of weeks ago, the President tweet-ordered Republicans in Congress to be more aggressive in their defense of him as a target of the impeachment inquiry. Like robots, about 30 or so of the Republican House members charged into the classified room being used by the inquiry committees demanding to be heard!

That delayed the hearings by a few hours. Also, about a dozen of those charging Republican elephants were on one of the three committees conducting the inquiry, meaning they already had access to the room. But that’s not my point.

For the last couple of days the President has been Tweeting that Republicans in Congress should stop criticizing the process and start defending him on the substance – meaning defend him against coming impeachment articles of abuse of power among other things, including that call with the Ukrainian president that so many now have testified about, confirming what the whistleblower said.

Here the Republican flock hesitates a bit because they don’t want to defend him on the substance, likely because many believe he has abused his office but they fear him.

This week, a decorated military man who is still serving took to the witness table before the impeachment inquiry testifying to behavior by the President that compromised national security. In response, the President and many in his Republican chorus criticized the colonel (who was criticizing his commander-in-chief - a huge deal). They called him an immigrant and implied his loyalty was to his birth country, Ukraine. He also is Jewish and to many Jews this “loyalty to another country” is a trope used against Jews for years because the anti-semitic trope implies Israel is their home country.

So, there are Republicans
taking up the President’s knee-jerk instinct to attack anyone who crosses him.

Will the Republicans defend him on the substance?

Well, likely most will, yes, because they fear they will lose election if they cross Trump. Trump is the mafia boss in this scenario, and you don’t cross a mafia boss, ever.

All presidents, whichever party, want loyalty from their party’s members in the House and Senate. But none to the degree that Trump demands it. Literally blind loyalty because they have to trust he's telling the truth, something he has a bad record on. Cross him and his people find an acolyte to oppose you. Criticize him and you are attacked as an enemy of his.

Look at the record. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham criticized Trump during the 2016 campaign in no uncertain terms. But Graham has come to heel at Trump’s knee. Just as Trump said the ISIS terrorist “died like a dog” that’s also how Trump likes his supporters – heeling at his command like the dogs they are.

The impeachment inquiry is about to enter the next stage -- the stage Trump and his followers  have called for – open hearings where the President gets to question witnesses, exactly how the process has been carried out before.

This will be better than the best courtroom drama on TV, watching as witnesses testify to his misdeeds. The president probably will have direct feeds into his supporters' ears so he can orchestrate his defense. Will his defenders want to attack a soldier in uniform who is doing what he thought he could never do – testify against his commander? They already have in a personal, inappropriate way. But will they contest his version of the facts?

The whole situation has gotten very slimy, led by the slimer-in-chief. If any one of his defenders thought he had a soul, they’re about to see he has none. He will attack anyone who attacks him, even a witness who spilled blood for his country.

This from the man who claims to be an admirer and booster of the military. The man who boasted when he took office about “my generals.” The man who has attacked each of his generals as they tried to get the President to do the right things for the country.

Trump’s mission is to win. Not for the country, but for himself.

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If it quacks like a duck...

10/23/2019

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Yesterday’s testimony by the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine must be a turning point in Republican senators and House members’ blind loyalty – fear, really – of President Trump.

Other than those who believe in conspiracy theories or the existence of a dark state in the government, you had to have heard the testimony not only as another validation of the whistleblower’s report on Trump, but a frightening tale of a President of the United States clearly using his office as a private throne to honor him and only him, and to serve only his selfish and childish needs. Our country is of the people, by the people and for the people. Not for Donald Trump.

He thinks the Russia investigation was a hoax? He thinks the whistleblower is a made up person? He should try believing that President of the United States attempted to extort another country’s leader to help him win an election. Who’d  believe that would ever happen?

But, with Donald Trump it’s always “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” so I expect we will be hearing even more tales of a man who thinks the presidency is like a mafia boss who’s power is unquestioned and whose orders are followed…or else. Trust me, there is more to the story involving matters other than Ukraine.

If the GOP members of the House and the Senate can just acknowledge that their souls are worth more than being tied to the death with a man with a death wish, we could rid the country of this criminal in the Oval Office. Yes, he is a criminal. If you don’t think extortion of another leader is a quid pro quo, it doesn’t have to be. It clearly is a high crime AND misdemeanor.

I never thought Trump would be impeached by the House AND found guilty by the Senate. But how can you not vote to convict a man who used his office to extort to gain a domestic political advantage. Not to mention deprive an ally of millions of military dollars to defend itself.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said that if he could be shown evidence of a quid pro quo he would change his mind about the President being innocent. Lindsey, is this enough? A 50-year, respected man who has given his entire adult life to this country speaking on the record – does that do it for you? Along with the other evidence already on the table? If not, what the hell will?

And if it’s true that Trump tried to extort the Ukrainian president, what else has he done that we don’t know about? I mean besides getting wealthier by having foreigners stay at his properties? OR trying to award himself a big government contract? He blamed the Democrats and the media for that. No, it was his greed and belief that he is all powerful that did it.

Republicans, hasn’t this gone far enough? This is not a debate over whether we should have conservative or liberal judges. This is not a debate over how big government should be. This is not a debate about free education, or health care.

This is a debate over right or wrong.

Which side are you on?

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Neither stable nor a genius

10/14/2019

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The self-proclaimed “stable genius” is self-demonstrating that he isn’t.

His foreign policy, such as he has one, is failing all around the world and, as Donald Trump’s presidency has gone on, he has taken to making many of his decisions – especially on foreign policy – by himself, in a vacuum, despite having departments full of foreign policy experts. Of course, he doesn’t trust those folks because of his imagined opponent of a “deep state” conspiracy against him.

Trump is driven by today's and tomorrow’s headlines, not by any personal ideology – other than, maybe, his selfish personal interests which could range from personal enrichment to getting re-elected.

His latest stable genius moment was to move our troops out of Syria and away from supporting the Kurds, who helped us eliminate the caliphate. As pleased as Turkey is with this decision – the next day in effect they started moving into Syria, killing our former allies the Kurds - even the Republicans in Congress almost unanimously have voiced opposition to this move.

Let’s add into this foreign policy bonanza:
  • Trump announced a major agreement with China on trade. But the truth is there is no agreement at this point and the master negotiator probably gave China even more leverage since now he needs an agreement as negotiations continue.
  • Trump’s self-inflicted North Korea policy is flaming out in the aftermath of more nuclear testing by North Korea and his BFF Kim Jong Un basically telling the rest of America there will be no deal but leaving the out that our self-proclaimed “best negotiator in the world” is someone he wants to meet with to negotiate. That would be Trump who he obviously sees as easy pickings. For this failure, Trump thinks he should be awarded the Nobel Prize.
  • The Wall along our Mexican border that he repeatedly promised during his campaign (and would be paid for by Mexico) and during his presidency has seen not one foot of new wall built nor one dollar contributed by Mexico. Replacement of existing wall is going on and Trump points at those repairs as his building the wall. This way, he can lie on his campaign that he is building the wall.
  • While Trump caved to Israeli leader Netanyahu on moving our embassy inIsrael (to help Netanyahu win reelection, which he didn't), the long-promised winning Middle East strategy, being driven by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, has yet to be revealed though it has been in the works, we’ve been told, since Day One of his presidency.
  • Trump has threatened to pull our troops out of Japan and South Korea if those countries don’t increase compensation of posting them there. Of course that troop withdrawal, similar to Syria, would create a power vacuum at a time when North Korea is being as aggressive as ever with nuclear and missile tests.

There are more examples – the Paris Climate deal, NATO, NAFTA, relations with Russia, fighting the Islamic State to name a few – all of which (maybe with the exception of NAFTA) are putting America in a weakened global position.

Trump apparently is looking at a long list of promises he made on his campaign and is trying to show he delivered on every one. Now, many presidential candidates have promised much on their campaigns but when they got into office and learned more about the reality of certain situations, backed off for national security reasons.

Not Trump. He sees keeping his promises as a way he can campaign to a second term, whether those decisions are best for the U.S. or not.

For all his professing to be our military and veterans’ best friend, his foreign policy shows his disdain for the work they have done. Even Green Berets are being anonymously quoted (for legitimate fear of reprisals) saying what a disaster the decision for abandoning the Kurds is. And he says he respects the military but has ignored the commanders repeatedly when making decisions.

Republicans in Congress seem to be more willing to criticize Trump’s foreign policy than his domestic policy (which goes against the grain of GOP doctrine in many areas) probably because they know they can’t correct foreign policy mistakes as “easily” as they might correct his domestic policy decisions. Plus his latest decision on Syria, experts say, will allow ISIS to regroup and attack America again.

Prior to his election when asked where he got his knowledge of foreign policy Trump admitted that he mostly got it from the Sunday TV talk shows. Trump has demonstrated the truth of that as he prefers to take foreign policy advice from the likes of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson – a man who never served in the government nor is a foreign policy expert (though he was a contestant on Dancing with the Stars where he was voted off in week one).

Trump ignores counsel from his Cabinet or the thousands of public servants who get paid to gather information so decisions in foreign policy can be considered carefully and with the background of solid intelligence and from experts on each of the countries involved.

Our “stable genius” is neither stable nor a genius.


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    B. Jay Cooper

    B. Jay is a former deputy White House press secretary to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He also headed the communications offices at the Republican National Committee, U.S. Department of Commerce, and Yale University. He is a former reporter and is the retired deputy managing director of APCO Worldwide's Washington, D.C., office.
    He is the father of three daughters and grandfather of five boys and one girl. He lives in Marion, Mass.

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