10.26.19: A Parting Gift for President Trump

There's no doubt that the killing of Abu Bahr al-Baghdadi is good news. However, today it came with a lot of qualifiers from the panel, reporters and analysts. The common thread through out was that American Special Forces don't get al-Baghdadi without intelligence on the ground, which the Kurds instrumental in helping us get.

As fmr. DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson pointed out, now was the time to go with U.S. Special Forces pulling out later down the road would have been much more difficult. While the U.S. Military, specifically U.S. Special Forces, are commended for they work, professionalism and bravery as they should be and are, the heavy hand of politics weighs on this entire episode. Andrea Mitchell explained that it is Putin who is the leader in Syria and has influence over Turkey, Assad in Syria, and in effect Iran as well. President Trump completely ceded control of northern Syria to Russia and as a parting gift the U.S. got al-Baghdadi.

At this point it's to be expected, when thanking people the president in his statement started with countries and at the top of the list was Russia, even though National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien clearly stated that Russia is not our ally, though pointing out that interests do overlap.

You can watch the president's full statement:

CLICK HERE TO WATCH VIDEO

 Since a 'Russian' thank you at the top is no longer considered odd, one aspect of Mr. Trump's statement was his repeating and rephrasing a description of how al-Baghdadi screamed and cried, running in fear, humiliated; the president even used the word 'terrorized,' certainly done to send a particular message.

Maybe it was a metaphor for what he'd like to do with his Democratic adversaries in the House after this devastating week for the president in terms of the impeachment inquiry. Mr. Trump needed something good to happen.

As Amy Walter pointed out, the impeachment is underwater in the polls in the swing states of Minnesota, Wisconsin et al. The question that Mr. Todd brought up is how are Democrats going to deal with this is an election year? That's why the Democrats need to get the public phase quickly. The consensus is that the House will vote to impeach and then the Senate will acquit the president. W

However, the panel didn't explain that given this inevitable outcome, Nancy Pelosi has laid out the case of why the president is unfit for office through public hearings. The Senate for its part doesn't impeach the president's breaking the law, voting down mostly party lines so Mrs. Pelosi has Republican senators on record as supporting lawlessness. The House is aiming to finish around Thanksgiving and when the smoke eventually clears it will be fresh in the minds of Iowa caucus voters.

So for the Democratic candidates who have to answer a disproportionate amount of questions on impeachment, the House Speaker has it covered.


Panel: Andrea Mitchell, NBC; Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report; Lanhee Chen, Stanford University; Jeh Johnson, fmr. DHS Secretary

10.20.19: How to Go From Bad to Worse and Back Again

What do you do if you're caught in a quid quo pro as president pressuring a foreign country for your own personal political gain? You make a disastrous foreign policy decision that leaves our allies hanging in the wind and damages U.S. credibility around the world. What do you do if said foreign policy decision is so roundly criticized by Democrats and Republicans alike and you can't take it back? You announce that you are going to enrich yourself with a government contract.

The week that was...

There is no doubt that after the 72-hour ceasefire that Vice President Mike Pence negotiated with Turkey is over, the violence will continue. NBC's Richard Engel stated that ethnic cleansing is 'underway'  in northeast Syria, along with evidence of roadside executions. Brett McGurk, Fmr. Security Council official in the Trump Administration heading up the anti-ISIL division, confirmed it would continue as Turkey moves to control a strip of Syrian land 435km in length, 30km inland. Mr. McGurk didn't commit to the notion that Turkey was trying to annex the territory but that's exactly what is happening. President Erdogan of Turkey wants his piece of the pie and the U.S. was unwilling to give him, but Russia would. You can imagine the conversation in which the Turkish president tells Mr. Trump this and explains in order to get his piece, U.S. troops have to get out of the way, and Mr. Trump gave it to him by trying to wash his hands of the whole thing. But they just got dirtier as it prompted an overwhelming wave of bi-partisan condemnation that the White House felt compelled to write a letter to Turkey - president to president - which Mr. Erdogan literally threw in the trash and invaded full force anyway.

Turkey will annex that region because Assad will give it up to them. The Syrian dictator gets his country back, be it under Russian and Iranian influence, by letting Turkey have a strip of land he didn't control anyway. It's serves Erdogan's strategic interest to drive the Kurds back into Iraq, a de facto buffer zone from which Turkey can establish further incursions. So if you're interested in American interests, Mr. Trump ceded Syrian to the control to Russia and Iran, not good news for Israel; literally blowing up bases to pull out on Erdogan's timetable so that his military can ethnic cleanse a region controlled by a U.S. ally, the Kurds, with the help of 10,000 extremist fighters; and of course in defending themselves, the Kurds could no longer guard the camps that contained ISIS making U.S. and our European allies less safe. Thank you Mr. Trump.

The kicker...

The troops aren't going home, they're being deployed to Iraq, as Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI) pointed out in today's interview. With regard to the U.S. troop deployment to Saudi Arabia, the political hypocrisy of it we discussed in our last column, Mr. Amash called them 'mercenaries,' in other words for sale when a 'friend' needs them. He continued on saying that he thinks the president feels he's 'untouchable.' It's clear through this debasing foreign policy move, Mr. Trump is not, nor should he be. When Mitch McConnell condemns the decision so publicly with an op-ed in The Washington Post, you know it's bad.

Presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN) explained that what we had in Syria is how it should look like, if we have to be there or find ourselves there then it should be a light footprint. Then work the diplomatic front. This is what he sees as a goal for Afghanistan as well.

Mr. Buttigieg also said that while there should be consequences for Turkey's actions, he explained that given they are a NATO member, they should be negotiated with as an ally... a NATO ally that has an all too cozy relationship with Russia. Where have we heard this story before?

The mess...

Mick. Mulvaney.
Paraphrasing: We withheld the aid to Ukraine because of our concern about corruption. Quid pro quo is something we do all the time, "Get Over It."
The acting Chief of Staff is genuinely trying to act like a chief of staff, however... A reporter even gave him a chance to clarify or walk it back in real time and he doubled down on it, in direct opposition to what the president had been saying all week. Maybe Mr. Mulvaney realized he may have made an error and decided to clean these up by informing the press corps that of the several sites they reviewed, Doral was the best place to have the next G7 summit. Plugging the boss's golf resort isn't a bad idea if all you want is to stay in his good graces. But three times was not the charm as later in the evening in a written statement correcting Mr. Mulvaney's misstatement and he unequivocally maintains that there was no quid pro quo.

And there's no G7 at Doral. Under pressure from Republican criticism of blatant self-dealing, the Trump Administration said last night that a new site will be chosen.



The Panel: Dan Balz, The Washington Post; Danielle Pletka, American Enterprise Institutue; Betsy Woodruff Swan, The Daily Beast; Joshua Johnson, NPR


One more thing...
American Hero, Mr. Elijah E. Cummings

House Committee of Chairman of Oversight and Reform

Elijah Cummings 

 

10.13.19: The Amorality of the Trump Administration

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) can always be counted on to give the historical and or ideological perspective or any number of issues or situations but what he lacks is any sense of the practical and reality that happens to give a backhanded slap to the face of ideology. Case in point today is how the Mr. Paul outlined the violent history between the Turks and the Kurds, and our alliances. Fighting with Turkey are Arab Kurds who are part of the free Syrian Army that was a U.S. ally for seven years, he explained. He also said that the conflict had been going on for 100 years, implying that given that long messy history, the United States shouldn't be involved.

But here's the rub... The Syrian Kurds were staunch U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS and we have abandoned them to be slaughter by the Turkish army. It's happening as this column is being written. NBC's Richard Engel reported that Syrian Kurds are being executed by extremist Arabs, Al Qaeda members, who are backed by the Turks. The Trump Administration betrayed a loyal ally, and has dishonored our country. Obviously, one can disagree, sometimes strenuously, with the decisions that put the U.S. military in that place, but now that we were there, the U.S. needs to stand up for its friends. As the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan said, the president got rolled by the president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. No matter the atrocities, the Trump administration will do nothing, not even sanctions. Don't think for a minute that the president hasn't thought about his substantial personal business interests in Turkey being affected.

Mr. Paul also rhetorically stated that the president has to determine what is best for the national security of the United States. Well, this is it. Thousands of ISIS fighters and sympathizers are breaking out and escaping from prisons guarded by the Kurds, but not anymore. Yet, the Trump Administration this week sent 1,800 troops to Saudi Arabia. To Senator Paul's credit, he said that we shouldn't be sending armaments or troops to Saudi Arabia until they behave better.

The bottom line is that the Trump Administration pulled troops out of one country, which has facilitated ethnic cleansing and a humanitarian crisis and put troops into another country to continue the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, in Yemen. The amorality of this administration should make all Americans feel ashamed. Rep. Elliot Engel (D-NY) said that he has never seen anything as disgusting as this in all his time in Congress.

Should NATO consider kicking Turkey to the curb? Most certainly.

And Rudy Giuliani? He's now under investigation for his illegal lobbying work in Ukraine by the same federal office that he once led in the Southern District of New York. He had lunch on Wednesday with two associates that were arrested that same evening. And what are they charged with? They allegedly funneled Russian money to Republican candidates, namely Pete Sessions (R-TX), and asked him to talk to the State Department, in which he wrote a letter, to remove the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Maria Yananovitch who was actually fighting corruption. Die the hero or live long enough to become the villain. Mr. Giuliani who once prosecuted the New York Mafia and its corruption only to now be superlatively corrupt himself. #nohero.


Panel: Peggy Noon, The Wall Street Journal; Ashley Parker, The Washington Post; Michael Schmidt, The New York Times, Cornell Belcher, Democratic strategist

One more thing...
This week at a rally in Minneapolis, Donald Trump called the impeachment inquiry illegal, unconstitutional and bull shit. Ironic given the fact that all his bull shit is either illegal and or unconstitutional.

10.6.19: U.S. Democracy For Sale

Chuck Todd mentioned the two realities at play right now, what sixty percent of the country believes to be the facts versus what the other forty percent believes. No matter how you slice that up, one thing is overwhelmingly evident.. ah, true, and that is that Donald Trump is unfit to be president of the United States.

O. Kay Henderson, News Director at Radio Iowa, said that Republican voters went through the entire Russia investigation and there were no consequences for the president for his asking Russia for help in the election and then the obstruction that followed, and now what's happening with the president and his surrogates pressuring Ukraine, leaves them asking, "this again?"

Yes, this again...

And why? Because Donald Trump knows that the Republican-controlled Senate will let him get away with it by looking the other way, remaining silent, or dismissing it as "Trump being Trump." That last bit is most dangerous for U.S. democracy then people realize and today's panel trivialized it because if Trump loses the election next year but refuses to leave office because he says it is rigged, is that just Trump being Trump? If the president uses information that China provided him to win the election, is that Trump just being Trump?

The president, being transactional by nature, is putting up the for sale sign on American democracy. He's sent his sales people - Rudy Giuliani, William Barr and Mike Pompeo - out to solicit purchases of the president's corrupt intent. His statements this week on the south lawn asking Ukraine and China to investigate Joe Biden are impeachable. When you see a video clip of Marco Rubio (R-FL) saying that the president may just be trying to get a 'rise' out of the press for saying what he said, what he's really telling you is that the president's words don't matter.

But here's the rub, they do. When the president makes a statement about the trade war with China, which is causing a global recession by the way, the markets move. When the president says that he believes Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence community, you get idiot Senators like Ron Johnson (R-WI) being unwilling to confirm as to whether he trusts CIA or the FBI.

Speaking of Mr. Johnson, his appearance today on "Meet The Press" was disgraceful and unworthy of the office he holds. From the outset he was defensive and practically yelling at Mr. Todd. He denigrated the FBI, CIA, the press and fmr. CIA Director John Brennan, personally. He said he wasn't defending the president nor criticizing him and that he just wanted to get to the truth, but that is is the farthest thing from what he wants. What he really wants is to hold onto his office, and speaking out against this president will cost him his seat. Mr. Brennan was correct when he said that the Wisconsin senator was running scared. Mr. Johnson said that when he confronted the president about the Ukraine call, Mr. Trump denied it and he believed him. Vladimir Putin denied it too. As fmr. under-secretary of state, Rick Stengel, explained, every answer that Mr. Johnson gave was a classic Russian disinformation tactic of 'whataboutism.'

Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) called what the president did this week appalling, and Mr. Trump tweeted that Mr. Romney should be impeached. That's how little the president knows about the law, Senators can not be impeached. And then you have people like Rich Lowry, who is not a conservative but a shill whose magazine relies on Republican contributions to maintain itself, not caring about the law. He said that it is wrong for the president to solicit a foreign government to investigate a political opponent but that it's not an impeachable offense. It's against the law so of course it's impeachable.

If Republicans do not step, which they won't we're going to continue to see the eroding of our democratic principles, as Mr. Brennan put it. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said it was a 'green light' to solicit interference, but in Trump parlance, it's a FOR SALE sign.


Panel: Kristen Welker, NBC; O. Kay Henderson, Radio Iowa; Rick Stengel, fmr. under-secretary of state; Rich Lowry, The National Review

One more thing... 
Kristen Welker mentioned that another whistleblower may be coming forward about conversations and information about what the administration did with regard to Ukraine. That is going to happen so look out for it this week.