Trump the President; Trump the Man
On China, Nukes, Pornstars, and FBI Raids
Our president’s name has constantly been at the lips of our news anchors, commentators, tweeters, and coworkers. That probably makes him very happy. But all this noise can cause confusion, as the many issues surrounding President Trump blend together into one dissonant hum. Only by untangling these issues can we hope to give President Trump, and his detractors, a fair shake. Further, it might also be worth separating these issues into two categories: those of Donald Trump, President of the United States; and those of Donald Trump, the Man. You can like the Man, dislike the President, visa versa, or some other combination.
1.) The President
First, here are two issues from the news facing Trump the President.
a. Trade War with China
Here, Donald Trump has a point. The Economist, Fareed Zakaria, and the majority of informed commentators agree with the President that China is a “trade cheat.” China uses a variety of formal and informal, legitimate and illegitimate, means to block foreign firms from competing in China’s market. The Chinese government increasingly intervenes in the economy, and has a tendency to take its surest aim at foreign companies. On top of it all, there is cybersecurity; China, not Russia, is actually conducting the most extensive cyber-warfare with the United States. Their targets are American companies, whose secrets and intellectual property are then shared with their Chinese competitors.
The United States hoped that China would liberalize after gaining access to the world markets in 2001, when it joined the World Trade Organization. However, given the recent consolidation of power around President Xi Jinping, China seems destined to remain as authoritarian as ever. Meanwhile, a recent study has shown that a quarter of all American industrial jobs lost between 1990 and 2007 can be explained by Chinese trade cheating. These are the frustrated voters that got Trump into office.
So, is a unilateral tariff on steel and aluminum the answer? No. America should work within the established order it helped create. It should stand up for the collaborative, classically liberal values that historically it sought to spread across the world, and not ignore them out of frustration. Free trade helps the global poor. Period.
That said, this is the path every past president has taken, and they have all failed. One can’t help but feel a tinge of sympathy, as Fareed Zakaria does, for what Trump is trying to do:
“Getting tough on China is a case where I am willing to give Trump’s unconventional methods a try. Nothing else has worked.”
b. Nukes in North Korea and Iran
Here, Trump is sending dangerously mixed signals. President Trump has agreed to meet North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to discuss his country’s nuclear weapons program. Obviously, any diplomacy is better than a ground war on the Korean peninsula. And, who knows, maybe Trump can step up and become the dealmaker he has long claimed to be. A complete victory is unlikely; the North Koreans will probably ask that America remove its troops from South Korea and Japan in exchange for halting their nuclear weapons program. This is a nonstarter. However, if some small consolation is met, President Trump should have little trouble selling it as a big win; he’s done it before.
The real issue becomes clear when Iran is thrown into the mix. President Trump has long derided the deal former-President Obama and former-Secretary of State John Kerry struck with the Iranian government. Many agree with the president on this issue, and not all out of political expediency. However, the vast majority of experts agree that Iran is meeting its end of the nuclear deal, and yet President Trump has made it clear that he plans on pulling the U.S. out unless the Iranians meet some greater, ill-defined benchmark. Further, the president has recently surrounded himself with two new Iran deal-skeptics — Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo, and National Security Advisor John Bolton — and has indicated he is willing to pull out even if our European allies are not.
Can we expect North Korea to take our word on a nuclear arms deal if such a deal only remains valid when same political party stays in the White House? Certainly not. President Trump needs to make a choice — respect diplomacy on both fronts, or run the risk of two costly wars. Dealing effectively with nukes requires clarity and predictability, neither of which is a particular skill of the president.
2.) The Man
Second, here are two interconnected issues facing Trump the Man. Separating them should shed light on why we should care about either.
a. Stormy Daniels
Before his election, Donald Trump had a brief affair with a pornstar. This relationship occurred not long after the birth of his youngest son, Barron. In an interview with CBS’s “Sixty Minutes,” Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, aired out many of the dirty details of her fling with the future President of the United States. She claimed that part of the reason she agreed to have sex with Mr. Trump was a promise by him to secure a spot for her on his hit TV show, “The Apprentice.” When it became clear that was not going to happen, Ms. Clifford ended it.
Why should we care? These were two adults having consensual, albeit adulterous, sex. Ms. Clifford made it clear on more than one occasion during her interview that she was “not a victim,” and that she did not wish to detract from the perils of real victims by calling herself one. What is the problem?
Let’s approach this by level of controversy. First, in light of the “Me Too” movement, there are some that might critique Ms. Clifford’s opinion on her own victimhood. They would claim that Mr. Trump was a man with power, who was using that power to convince a woman to have sex with him. Ms. Clifford, therefore, must not be aware that she is a victim. Obviously, this take is far from uncontroversial (and there are other allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump that should be of more concern) but it is out there.
Perhaps less controversial would be some sort of acknowledgment of hypocrisy here — for both the President and his supporters. The President himself harkened on former-President Bill Clinton’s affairs continuously during the election. Meanwhile, the President’s core electorate includes large numbers of the old “moral majority” who are nonetheless willing to give the Mr. Trump a “mulligan” for his past moral transgressions. Why the double standard?
Finally, the least controversial reason for concern about the Stormy Daniels issue is the mistreatment of Ms. Clifford herself after the alleged affair. The non-disclosure agreement aside, Ms. Clifford alleges that she was physically threatened by an associate of Mr. Trump in a parking lot with her child in the car. If true, this must be taken seriously. Bullying like this is disgraceful, more fitting of a mob boss than the leader of the free world.
b. Michael Cohen Raid
Finally, we should address the fact that on April 9th federal agents from the Southern District of New York conducted a no-knock raid in the offices of President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. Despite this issue involving the Department of Justice, federal agents, and federal judges, it should be discussed in “the man” section because the ramifications may be very personal.
The FBI raided Mr. Cohen’s office in order to secure documents on a range of subjects, including President Trump’s private business deals, and the “hushmoney” payments made by Mr. Cohen to Ms. Clifford. These documents might normally have been protected by attorney client privilege. Therefore, it is likely that the search fell into the crime-fraud exception, and required a warrant. In order to get a warrant, the Department of Justice would have to have shown probable cause that such a search would produce evidence of some sort of crime (whether it was a violation of election law or some other crime remains unclear). That said, as Benjamin Wittes, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute and Editor-in-Chief of the Lawfare blog, wrote:
“This warrant did not issue just on probable cause. There is no way — no sliver of a chance of a way — that SDNY went to a magistrate for a search warrant *against the lawyer for the President of the United States* without much more than probable cause.”
Recall that almost all of the members of the DOJ that gave permission for the raid are registered Republicans — including Robert Mueller, who referred the issue to the Southern District of New York, and Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who approved the raid— and many were put into their positions by President Trump himself. The no-knock element of the warrant means that the judge felt there was a very real risk that the documents would be destroyed. Time will tell what all this means.
In conclusion, the purpose of this post was to separate Donald Trump, the President, from Donald Trump, the Man. Many have argued that while Trump, the Man, is an imperfect vessel for reform, an improvement in policy from President Obama’s administration is nonetheless possible. Therefore, we considered two policy issues the President is facing in his official capacity. We did not have a chance to address the host of additional issues his administration faces every day, from border security and immigration to his approach to criminal justice and tax policies. Those we will save for another day.
Additionally, we considered two interconnected issues that Trump, the Man, will eventually be forced to recon with. So far, if nothing else, the imperfect vessel has remained afloat. But the seas appear Stormy-er by the day.
