Looking At The Trumpanzee Amateur Hour, One Tends To Ask, "Who's In Charge Here?"

Existential evil

You probably recall that when candidate Trumpanzee was still unsure Vladimir Putin and Robert Mercer could actually deliver the election to him, he made Ohio Governor John Kasich a very attractive offer-- take the VP job and run the government. The offer came from Fredo Trump, the eldest and dumbest of the offspring. Back in late July, the NY Times' Robert Draper reported that "according to the Kasich adviser (who spoke only under the condition that he not be named), Donald Jr. wanted to make him an offer nonetheless: Did he have any interest in being the most powerful vice president in history? When Kasich’s adviser asked how this would be the case, Donald Jr. explained that his father’s vice president would be in charge of domestic and foreign policy. Then what, the adviser asked, would Trump be in charge of? “Making America great again” was the casual reply. There's no reason to believe that Trumpanzee didn't make the same or a similar offer to Mike Pence.

Unsubstantiated White House scuttlebutt has it that Pence, a Paul Ryan ally, is, more or less, in charge of domestic policy-- certainly many of Trump's most heinous appointments are coming straight from Pence, particularly Betsy DeVos and Tom Price-- but that everything has to be cleared by Jared Kushner-in-law. On the foreign policy front, crackpot ex-General Michael Flynn, neo-Nazi Steve Bannon and Kushner-in-law are piloting the ship. Yesterday, the neocon editorial board of the staunchly Republican Wall Street Journal worried that Trump's foreign policy was amateurish, wrong-headed and off to a really bad start. As Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto went on TV to promise his countrymen to turn Mexico’s 50 consulates in the U.S. into "true ramparts in defense of migrant rights," Ryan Lizza, at the New Yorker was even harsher towards Trump's bungling and heavy-handed Twitter diplomacy.

This depressing episode confirms several of the worst fears about Trump. The first is that he is not a good negotiator. Rather than waiting a week before he issued his executive orders on immigration, Trump signed them at a moment that maximally embarrassed Videgaray, the Mexican official who is the most sympathetic to him. The moves left the unpopular Peña Nieto with no choice but to cancel next week’s visit, and poisoned the relationship with one of America’s closest allies and our third-largest trading partner.

Furthermore, it showed that with his impulsive use of Twitter to make foreign-policy statements, Trump is turning American diplomacy into a series of personal relationships unguided by strategy or forethought. He praises foreign leaders who flatter him, such as Vladimir Putin, and marginalizes those who criticize him, like Peña Nieto, without regard to the strategic value of the relationship. He is turning foreign policy into a version of professional wrestling, where alliances and rivalries shift based on petty personal factors. At any moment, Trump is a tweet away from creating an international conflagration.

The incident also made it clear that congressional Republican leaders, who, during the Obama years, were vocal about the President’s relationships with other countries, have no interest in policing Trump’s foreign policy. At a press briefing in Philadelphia yesterday, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who casually announced that Congress would find some fifteen billion dollars to pay for the border wall, had nothing to add about Trump’s detonation of the U.S.-Mexico alliance. “The President can deal with his relationships with other countries,” McConnell said.

Finally, and perhaps most important, Trump’s treatment of Mexico reinforces an emerging world view that casts aside the values at the center of American foreign policy since the Second World War. As with his degrading comments about nato, his view that Taiwanese democracy and independence is a negotiating chip with China, his cavalier attitude toward Russia’s annexation of Crimea and meddling in Ukraine, his abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership without even a cursory consultation with allies in the region who fear Chinese hegemony, his obsessions with the use of torture and the seizure of Iraq’s oil fields, Trump’s views on U.S.-Mexico relations are devoid of the liberal values that have kept Western democracies together for decades. During the Cold War, Reagan pushed Mexico to liberalize its economic and political system and tried to bring the country closer to America and away from any Communist-inspired Latin American movements. Both Bushes, Clinton, and Obama made economic integration with Mexico a priority, and they all worked toward humane immigration solutions. Trump, meanwhile, is treating Mexico like a nineteenth-century colony. Other countries are watching, and the long-term effect could be to gradually isolate us from the rest of the world.

Mexican grassroots groups are reacting badly-- albeit predictably-- to Trump. There are already calls for boycotts of iconic American brands, from Coke, McDonald's and Walmart to Starbucks, which is already reporting a fall off in business. So is this all the fault of the impulsive Adderall-addicted orange ape? Or is there someone else driving the crazy car? Mike Allen, writing for Axios.com, points directly at Bannon, Trump's deranged Rove. Bannon's been stocking the Regime with his allies, many if them certifiably insane. He wrote Trumpanzee's widely panned Inaugural speech and the poorly-crafted-- probably illegal-- executive orders that went out this week. Bannon incited Trump's bickering not just with Mexico, but with China, the EU and the media. It certainly appears that Bannon has outmaneuvered the more mainstream Priebus, the Paul Ryan ally many conservatives had hoped would be running Trump's bizarre show. He isn't. Bannon-- and through him, sociopathic billionaire Robert Mercer-- are. This is Trump's daily approval ratings for his first week in the White House. Ever see anything like this before?