The Trumpian Chronicles — weeks 10&11— where Trump outsourced his job to Kushner&bombed Syria to get DC to cheer
A pessimist-realist’s take on our changing world
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Special edition Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9
Weeks 10&11 are joined in these chronicles, because even Trump gets the timeline wrong, as per Axios: “Seriously, where do we even start with week 11 in Trumpland? It’s been so crazy that even POTUS himself has lost track of time, calling his time in office so far “one of the most successful 13 weeks in the history of the presidency” on Thursday. You can’t blame him for getting confused because it sure feels like 13 weeks.”
The major events of these 2 weeks:
1-Russia continues to poison everything the WH touches
2-Trump outsourcing most of his job as President to his son-in-law Kushner
3-Neil Gorsuch confirmed to SCOTUS via the so-called nuclear option and the change in Senate rules
4-The “attack” on Syria and the praise from official Washington and the media
Let’s dive into these 4 events:
1-Russia continues to poison everything the WH touches: in week 9 FBI Director Comey acknowledge the probe into the Trump campaign’s bizarre relationships with Russian intelligence. Trump, a supposed master of misdirection, tweeted that Obama “tripped his wires” and Trumpland started running around to find evidence of this “tripping”. Enter “unknown before 2017” Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, improbable chairman of the Intelligence Committee. Nunes committed serious drama when he appeared in a makeshift press conference at the White House to state that he had just seen evidence that Trump was indeed correct and that the Trump campaign had been wiretapped by ricochet, being that they WERE TALKING TO RUSSIAN SPIES. Nunes refused to explain the source of this “intelligence” for days. It later surfaced that he had literally jumped out of a car and disappeared into the night to a secret location to be briefed. This bad spy novel got even weirder when it came out that: 1- Nunes did not share the intelligence with his fellow members first but ran to the WH 2- said WH turned out to be the source of this “raw” intelligence. Maggie Haberman’s reporting published on March 30 identified the sources as “Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the senior director for intelligence at the National Security Council, and Michael Ellis, a lawyer who works on national security issues at the White House Counsel’s Office and was previously counsel to Mr. Nunes’s committee.” After much handwringing, Nunes decided on April 6 to recuse himself from the Congressional Russia probe, “applauded” by his colleague Adam Schiff, Democrat ranking member.
my take: The Trump-Russian connections run deep and wide (his trip in the 80s, his “partners” in the casino business in the 90s, Felix Sater&other unsavories in the 00s) but he’s able to say with a straight face that Russia and Trump are not joined at the hip. Conspiracy theories abound on what links actually bind this President to Russia’s autocrat. I’m interested in how this WH is incapable of being straight with the public and itself on the reality of the ties between Trump Tower and Moscow. Every week Trump-Russia watchers claim that the “smoking gun” is about to come out and every week the story becomes more complex, the intricate web between Manafort, the Mercers, Bannon, the deVos/Princes murkier and murkier. I was too young during Watergate but I worked in media during the infamous Clinton impeachment and that process tooks months to come to bear. We’re only 11 weeks into this Presidency and for all the Maxine Waters calling for immediate impeachment there are more sober analysts of the forces at play. The stark reality is this: Trump hovers around the 30s in approvals (before Thu’s attack on Syria) and is on the road to the low 20s, lower than any President. This reflects the deep polarization and resentment of the US population with their supposed elites. Trump is the SYMPTOM not the cause of 40 years of debasement of government undertaken by the GOP post-Goldwater, supplemented by the Evangelicals’ comeback in the 70s and their hijacking of societal wedge issues. As I wrote in my Feb 16 special edition: “the US&the world have been used to “normal” leaders for too long, this is no longer possible in the 24/7 media cycle. Brand and showmanship gave us Trump-directly elected leaders need to pander, exaggerate, and Trump is doing just that. This is what, in my view, makes parliamentary systems superior to presidential systems. Parliamentary systems in the UK model allow for more safeguards and accountability. In a US-type system PM Cameron would have stayed past post-Brexit, yet his resignation upon defeat in the referendum was hailed as normal&did not equate a constitutional crisis. Think about that for a minute and imagine Trump having to go in front of Congress for questions every day from the opposition. Get it now? That’s what the US needs. The myth of a US president bestowed with superior qualities is just a myth, as we can all see, a single point of failure.”
2-Trump outsourcing most of his job as President to his son-in-law Kushner
It’s no secret that Trump has operated for decades with a fairly small cadre of confidantes, advisors and staff. He played the part of international businessman but this was a part, the Trump Organization was always mostly family-run. This inability to trust others beyond his immediate circle gets us to “princeling” Jared Kushner, himself the son of an outer-borough (NJ in fact) developer with dreams of Manhattan. Kushner being Trump’s son-in-law, he acted during the campaign as a key adviser, conduit to business and political circles etc. George HW Bush entrusted similar missions to his son George W during the 88 campaign but Bush 41 was a statesman and trusted professionals to do the job in government. Trump has entrusted so many core missions to Kushner it’s dizzying. Let’s underscore the fact that Kushner ran his family’s real estate business for 10 years and that is the extent of his world experience. To hear Trump say that if Kushner cannot pull off Israeli-Palestinian peace no one can is laughable on so many levels it truly is sad. As summed up this week by Bruce Bartlett, Reagan-Bush veteran: “President Trump has made his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a White House assistant with an exceptionally broad portfolio. Mr. Kushner has been charged with at least three major tasks, any one of which would be a full-time job: working on Middle East peace, preparing for a state visit by President Xi Jinping of China and overseeing a broad effort to reorganize the federal government utilizing business techniques. And on Monday, he accompanied Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on a visit to Iraq.”
my take: Trump and Kushner seem more than father-in-law/son-in-law and more like kindred spirits. Kushner’s expanded portfolio is troubling because of his inexperience but he has shown the common sense to reach out to more seasoned political veterans. The fact that he has not HIRED any yet should send 2 signals: 1- he, like Trump, could be wary of potentially disloyal staffers, 2- the Trump WH’s aura is so negative that he could be getting polite brushoffs. This is a problem because the entire US government relies on steady hands at the helm, particularly the key staff. They feud with Bannon spilling over into the public realm, the supposed “cuckservative” barbs and general ill will show that both men are jockeying for power but also that both are rank amateurs, with only a tiny sliver of relevant public service experience. Trump is famous for thrashing staff and firing them, including family (his brother). Everyone who assumes Jared Kushner is safe because he is family could very well be wrong.
3-Neil Gorsuch confirmed to SCOTUS via the so-called nuclear option and the change in Senate rules
the facts: in a move that will be either be remembered as master stroke or colossal failure, Senate Leader McConnell nuked Senate rules this week to enthrone Neil Gorsuch, 49 years old, to the Supreme Court. This caps off years of maneuvering on McConnell’s part, the epic shutdown of the Merrick Garland hearings being the pinnacle. McConnell is a wily operator, with the charisma of an oyster but a confidence rarely seen in the US Congress. Democrats filibustered to show they were fighting the good fight but Schumer knew that his counterpart was ready to change the rules to enshrine the “Scalia” seat with a conservative.
my take: Republican voters reportedly put the Supreme Court as the core issue that drove their vote towards insurrectionist Trump. The decades-long campaign to sell to the heartland that the real seat of power is SCOTUS and not POTUS worked wonders. Republicans should nonetheless be careful because Anthony Kennedy was sold as a reliable conservative and turned out to be anything but. Will Associate Justice Gorsuch surprise all ? Democrats are now pinning hopes that Justices Ginsburg, Kennedy and Souter hold their own until a Democrat sweeps back into the White House to hold the bulwark of the last decades’ civil rights advances. Let me be provocative for a bit: what if Democrats operate a judo move on the GOP’s States rights stance and claim it as their own ? New York, New England, California, Oregon etc are reliably Democrat states. Why not let SCOTUS devolve back to an originalist, minimalist court and let progressive states handle their own affairs on civil right, women’s rights, gay right, abortion ?
4-The “attack” on Syria and the praise from official Washington and the media
the facts: Trump wagged the dog on Thu night by launching 50+ missiles on a Syrian airstrip, after having contacted the Russian army, stationed nearby.
my take: First the “media packaging”: Trump’s weak delivery of his Teleprompter address, the poor sound quality, the reported inability to conduct a live feed from his Mar-A-Lago compound shows this WH to be worryingly amateurish. The non-strategy behind the intervention is staggering: we have candidate Trump repeating ad nauseaum his America First stance, rightly criticizing the Iraq War and in essence stating that he would roll back US presence in the Mideast. Enter President Trump who rolls into the CIA a day after his inauguration and jokes about going back in to “get the oil”. Then we have the botched Yemen raid which everyone seems to forget. This week, after 2 tough weeks of Russia-Trump news, we have the dog wagging because Trump was seemingly disturbed that the same refugees he banned from the US were killed. The most disturbing element remains how official Washington, both political and media, are exulting the virtues of this raid. Brian William’s use of “beautiful”, citing Leonard Cohen to top it off, is quite troubling.
The mithridatisation of the US centers of power relating to the use of force in “faraway” lands should provoke more questions and self-reflection. Sadly, the United States in 2017 is lacking in those qualities and there’s no sign of improvement.
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