It’s likely been said before–possibly by me–but it seems that this was the most eventful week in the entirety of the Trump presidency. It was a spectacular balls-up for not only Trump, but the entire GOP, and I’m hoping it will not be lost on voters in 2020.
1). Kim Jong unbelievable. Without doing any major prep work, without guidance from his subordinates, without any cautions that any reasonable president might have undertaken, President Bone Spurs finally got off his ášš and went to Vietnam, there to meet with the North Korean murderous despot and new best friend, Kim Jong un. The alleged Master of the Deal, coming off of being thoroughly out-dealt by Nancy Pelosi, was determined to get Kim to agree to de-nuclearization. He was absolutely certain that he could sweet talk him into it, because his tactics have worked so well with the Democratic House of Representatives.
And to the surprise of absolutely no one except Trump himself, he failed spectacularly.
I have to admit to being somewhat surprised. Kim Jong un basically drew a line in the sand: He wanted Trump to roll back sanctions against his country in exchange for…well, nothing, really. He did not even pretend to promise that he would shut down North Korea’s nuclear research. I must admit, I’m a bit surprised by that. I could easily see him promising Trump whatever he wanted and then not actually following through while Trump, in return, sticks to his part of the deal and lifts the sanctions. It would be months before Trump realized he’d been had, during which time North Korea would be benefiting from the deal and Kim would be laughing at Trump’s credulousness. But no, Kim made it clear that he wanted Trump to give him a major concession and offered absolutely nothing in return.
And why wouldn’t he think that Trump was that easy to sucker? Last Friday Kim assured Trump that he had zero knowledge of the torture inflicted on Otto Warmbier, and Trump bought into that as readily as he accepted the claims of ignorance by Putin and Saudi Arabian royalty over their own murderous actions. The Warmbier family expressed outrage that Trump thoroughly accepted Kim’s pleas of innocence, but really, they couldn’t have been surprised that he’d side with a dictator because he ALWAYS sides with dictators.
So Trump wound up getting out of Vietnam early, abandoning a lavish lunch set up. And if Trump passed on lunch, you know it had to have been a lousy situation.
2). Lawyer up. Meanwhile disbarred attorney Michael Cohen caused “The Price is Right” to be preempted by testifying before Congress. As opposed to the last time, when he lied to Congress in order to protect Trump, this time he had nothing to hide. And the GOP knew it, but that did not deter them from relentlessly attacking Cohen’s believability, even though they astoundingly did not challenge almost anything he said. Over and over they demanded to know why they should believe him, ignoring the fact that any number of mobsters have been taken down by bad men who were sworn in and told the truth about their actions. That is exactly what we were seeing here. Trump, thanks to his own words and actions, has been compared to a mob boss, and Cohen was the squealer who was ratting him out on all the crap he’d done.
How do we know Cohen wasn’t lying? Two reasons. First, no motive to do so. Will he get a book deal? Possibly, but so what? He could easily do that without testifying. Will it cause his prison sentence to be lessened? No. Second, he could easily have made the case far worse. He could have said he did believe that Trump conspired with Russia or asserted that he’d hit Melania, but he said no in both instances. Amusingly Trump claimed that Cohen had lied about everything except that, ignoring the far likelier possibility that Cohen wasn’t lying about any of it. Of course, with Trump’s malfunctioning brain, it’s entirely possible he doesn’t realize Cohen is telling the truth. He so lives in the moment of his fabrication that he likely doesn’t know the difference between fact and fiction anymore.
Furthermore he opened the door, which Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez then strode through, for Congress to examine Trump’s tax returns. There is obviously a wealth of information to be had there, which Trump is determined to make sure never gets out. Common sense tells you that anything someone wants to hide that badly contains damaging stuff. Do not forget that if income tax fraud was good enough to take down Al Capone, it’s good enough to take down Donald Trump.
Unfortunately the bottom line is that Cohen’s testimony will likely not have any real impact. For those who hate Trump, Cohen’s charges of him being a racist and con man merely confirm what we already know. Meanwhile his supporters will embrace the notion that Cohen can’t be trusted, even though they accept the words of a man who has demonstrably lied over eight thousand times in the past two years.
PAD
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Trump has probably already reached a point where he bled all the support he could have from sane folks. The 35% that still support him will support him in any and all circunstances, I suppose. Barring perhaps murdering or raping someone in national television, and even then I suppose a significant portion of his supporters would call “fake news”.
What I found surprising is that in my initial research into the collapse of the summit, both Republicans and Democrats complimented Trump by saying that walking away was the right thing to do, but I did not find sources talking about his lack of preparation, until researching the matter again yesterday after I read your blog entry, Peter, by Googling “Trump, Vietnam, “lack of preparation'”. It’s there in places like The Washington Post, 38 North, etc,. but not being stated by the talking heads.
In truth, walking away was the right thing to do given the options he had by that point. I doubt you’ll find very many people who will dispute that. However, it still represents an enormous failure on Trump’s part.
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This is Mr. Art of the Deal who told everyone only he could do the job and he would do it better than anyone else ever did. So he gives the house away for empty promises and little else of real long-term value in their first meeting, talks up the second meeting, has the TV schedule set to include the signing, and then gets chumped by Kim. Kim still has everything he walked into their first meeting with plus the US concessions he walked out of that meeting with while the US has nothing to show for any of it other than a bruised relationship with South Korea for throwing them under the bus in the first meeting.
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And it must be worrying him that even his idiot followers aren’t going to buy the bluff that he did a good job and was the power in control in the negotiations because- after trying to spin his incompetence into genius and his failure into winning for a day or so -he’s changing course and trying to blame the Democrats for the failed negotiations and his walking away like that.
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And, of course, the truly stupid in his flock are already regurgitating that codswallop.
And now he’s blaming the House Democrats and the Cohen hearing for the failure of the summit. Which he was claiming that ended because HE walked away from because of a bad offer.
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The rambling incoherent speeches. The extreme dissonance from one lie to the next. How can anybody still actually believe in this? How is he still at a 40% approval rating?
Are the Russians hacking into the polling sites?