Danielle Pletka from the American Enterprise Institute was sort of correct when she explained that the Trump Administration would not do something if the president wasn't OK with it. She also said that the Trump Administration has been tougher on Russia than the Obama Administration, which is also half right. The explanation comes in the face of the notion that the Administration/U.S. Foreign Policy apparatus writ large access and act in a way that is different from the president's.
Granted that U.S. and British politics respectively are chaotic and in a weakened state, it's still safe to say that the 'sacred relationship' between the two countries, dysfunctional as it is right now, is not broken and will not break in favor of Russia or the president's predilection to its leader Vladimir Putin. Even President Trump isn't going to jeopardize that even if it isn't his preference.
Was the Kremlin responsible for the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter? Given the use of the particular poison, Novichok, it's most probable as it was determined by the British government. Certainly a brazen act, it also put a significant amount of British citizens at risk. Standing with the UK, despite their exiting the EU, these countries stood with them:
EU Countries Non-EU Countries
Belgium Albania
Crotia Australia
Czech Republic Canada
Denmark Macedonia
Estonia Moldova
Finland Montenegro
France Norway
Germany Ukraine
Hungary United States
Ireland
Italy
Latvia
Lithuania
Luxemborg
Netherlands
Poland
Romania
Spain
Sweden
So the question: Are we headed for a new cold war?
From the amount of countries expelling Russian diplomats and the Kremlin reciprocating in kind, it would seem so, but alas it's unlikely. These expulsions are a tit-for-tat and expected, but because of President Trump's consistent silence in relation to Russia keeps it from going any farther.
If the president starts in with harsh Russian rhetoric that would trigger it, but it's not going to happen because of the Russian probe hanging over the administration. Contacts between Russian officials and Trump campaign officials have in fact been established, but it's up to the special counsel headed by Robert Mueller to put the story together and show that laws have been broken.
For the rest of these countries, some are standing in solidarity with Britain, but many one can suspect are joining the fray for various reasons, whether it's election meddling, annexing territory, naval activity in another country's waters, energy manipulation, or plain old deep distrust carried over from the Soviet era.
Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) described Russia as an 'unfriendly adversary,' which sums up the general attitude of the U.S. Senate and it also means that the Russia probe will continue. Speaking of that, Mr. Johnson also said that he thought that the special counsel should have been appointed after the Senate and House investigations. Good thing he isn't the attorney general because despite his reasoning that the special counsel disrupts congressional inquiries, the incompetence of the House and the hiccups in the Senate query have proven that it would have been the wrong move to wait.
Professor Emeritus at Harvard, Alan Dershowitz explained that a pardon can not be used as the pretext for a criminal charge because it's a Constitutional Act, even if there is corrupt intent because that last part is difficult to prove - even if it's for pardoning acts of collusion. As a counter-weight, Bob Bauer, former general counsel in the Obama
Administration stated that the underlying reason for the pardons, the collusion, was at
issue. Mr. Dershowitz explained the collusion is not unlawful as it is not mentioned. However, what he failed to mention, what Mr. Bauer began to state but was interrupted, is that having foreign nationals participating in a campaign, depending on degree, is in fact illegal. See FEC laws: https://www.fec.gov/updates/foreign-nationals/
As for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, fmr. Secretary David Shulkin stated that he did not violate any ethics laws, but nonetheless the investigation provided the pretext for his firing. But one has to think that there is some truth to what he was saying about privatizing the VA and look no further than today's interview with Senator Johnson for evidence.
Though he said being the head of the VA is a thankless job, he described the VA as a single-payer system, run by the government that doesn't work. That's the sound of someone who thinks privatizing the VA would be a good thing. However, that's not what most veterans would say. My general feeling is that once you bring in the profit motive into helping veterans that soon the profit will become more important than the veterans. An even more insidious thing could happen if private companies who run VA hospitals need to keep making profits. Think of this analogy: private prisons need to keep cells full to keep making money. Ugh. Does someone actually need to profit monetarily from the suffering of brave men and women who served their country?
Lastly, the panel discussed the police shooting of Stephon Clark in Sacramento and noted a column written by David French in the Weekly Standard, in which he said that police are trained to expect the worst at all times. But what ever happened to training police not to shoot unless shot upon? If that were the training then Mr. Clark would have not been shot because he didn't have a gun. Shooting first and asking questions later is a military tactic, not a policing tactic. With the militarization of the police, which Elise Jordan mentioned, it's this mentality that overrides restraint.
Panel: George Will, The Washington Post; Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institute; Joshua Johnson, NPR; Elise Jordan, NBC
A couple more things....
Art reflects cultural and the general mood of a society at the time it's being created. Not all the time, but many times. With that said, you have Roseanne Barr's television reboot. As Joshua Johnson explained the show is nuanced. But the bottom line is that it is a television program. If you like it, watch it. If you don't then don't. All good either way.
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