Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

It's a shame we let Trump back in the country when he stormed out of the NATO meetings and headed back to our shores after seeing a tape of other world leaders mocking him. Besides, we're getting to the point where Trump is so damn untethered we could have had Air Force One just set him down on an isolated, uninhabited island somewhere and he'd never know the difference. He would start holding his red hat=hatred rallies in front of the crabs and clams on the beach. He'd hear them cheering in his disintegrating mind. Eventually, though, the audience of crabs and clams would not be enough. He'd start to hear other voices, voices that mocked him. Even the breeze and the waves would seem to mock him as the gulls laughed at ever-increasing volume. He'd look out at the surrounding ocean and imagine he sees periscopes poking up through the surface. He'd hear the muffled voices of the submariners mocking him from below the surface. He'd hear the laughter of whole schools of fish. Whale songs would become whale laughter. The red tide would even form itself into the shape of huge red hats that read "Fuck You, Donnie!" That's right Donnie, everybody is laughing at you, at least the sane ones are. Scream loud Donnie. Scream loud! There isn't another human within 2000 miles. No one can hear you scream yourself to a whimper.

Alas, no one is going to drop him off on an island. Maybe we should just ask the folks in the middle picture to do a new version of "We Are The World" with some new lyrics.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

As the photographer tells the NATO leaders to look to their left, Traitor Don gets distracted by dreams of his master and their very private Monday meeting in Helsinki. Maybe he should take advantage of the opportunity to ask his Big Daddy Vladdy for asylum.

The Illegitimate "President" Is Doing A Lot Of Harm-- Who Is Complicit?

   

Señor imbecile, illegitimate fake "president" Trumpanzee is, as the Washington Post noted yesterday, "remaking the global trade order without significant political resistance or penalty, unchecked by a largely compliant Congress and bolstered by the loyalty of his supporters-- even those [pathetic, self-destructive morons] likely to be hurt by his burgeoning global trade war. The rubber stamp enablers in Congress-- i.e., the entire Republican Party-- is so passive in the face of Trump’s escalating trade conflict that they cannot be anything but complicit and that complicity is one of several factors that have made it easier for the illegitimate fake "president" to push on. I don't mean to sound rude, but any voter who pulls the lever or check the box for a Republican, is also complicit. Señor T can't remake our country on his own. By confirming his nominees, the Senate takes on collective guilt.

Those congressmembers and voters are also complicit for letting Trump get away with destroying, for example, NATO. The Post also noted yesterday that he's "upended the NATO summit here Thursday by calling an emergency meeting of leaders and threatening that if all member countries do not immediately increase their defense spending commitments, the United States would go it alone. It was not clear whether Trump was threatening a U.S. withdrawal from NATO, but some diplomats perceived his comments that way... Trump told NATO leaders that if they did not meet their defense spending targets of 2 percent of gross domestic product by January, the United States would go it alone… The officials said Trump threatened to 'do his own thing.'"

The NY Times, which was complicit in urging Americans to accept his latest nominee/criminal to the Supreme Court, had a different interpretation yesterday, claimng that Trumpanzee "strongly recommitted American support for NATO," saying that he "had won great concessions from allies on military spending, though he did not offer any details." Señor T, AKA-- the American whiny bitch:

"The United States was not being treated fairly, but now we are. I told people that I’d be very unhappy if they did not up their commitments very substantially."

German TV-- all day Friday

American members of Congress better remember that when they vote to confirm any Trump nomination, they are voting to confirm Trump and everything his regime does. The rest of the world has figured out what he is, why haven't senators in Washington, DC? History will not judge them kindly. This is nit game. Meanwhile, late Thursay afternoon, the AP reported that Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte insisted that "Italy hasn’t agreed to any additional financial commitments to NATO amid pressure from" the illegitimate, clownish American "president."

“Italy has inherited spending commitments that we haven’t changed. So there is no additional spending,” Conte told a news conference. However, he said the issue over a better distribution of contribution to the military alliance is legitimate... “We must consider that NATO has evolved over time. It was born 70 years ago. Its vocation, features, organizational structure and operative strategy have changed. And rightly so, the United States says NATO is more focused on European defense and interests and it doesn’t seem proportionate to maintain this form of contribution.”

Conte added that he hadn’t heard any threat by Trump to withdraw the United States from the alliance, as was reported by some media.

“My ears didn’t hear Trump threaten to leave NATO. So I can’t confirm this news. If he said something on the side I don’t know,” Conte said.

...French President Emmanuel Macron has denied President Donald Trump’s claim that NATO allies have agreed to boost defense spending beyond 2 percent of gross domestic product.

Macron said: There is a communique that was published yesterday. It’s very detailed.”

He added: “It confirms the goal of 2 percent by 2024. That’s all.”

The summit statement affirms a commitment made in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea that NATO allies would halt defense spending cuts, start spending more as their economies grow, with the aim of moving toward 2 percent of GDP within a decade.

Trump, probably at Putin's insistence, has called NATO "obsolete" and falsely claimed that the U.S. pays 90% of NATO expenses. On Wednesday, PolitiFact looked at Trump's absurd claims about NATO and decided to not rate them "partly false" or "mostly false," but just FALSE. "Trump’s statement," they wrote, "shows a misunderstanding of the way NATO spending works. Other member countries do not owe the United States or NATO any money.

"It most certainly is not true, as the president has suggested repeatedly, that other NATO countries owe us money," said Christopher Preble, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute. "The 2 percent figure refers to what each country spends on its defense, as a share of that country’s GDP. It does not imply owing the U.S. anything."

NATO countries do not pay money to a broad NATO defense budget. NATO defense spending is "not money that is going to be put in some kitty at NATO," Benjamin said.

In reality, each country determines its own level of military spending, said Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council for Global Affairs and the former U.S. ambassador to NATO under former President Barack Obama.

"No one owes us any money," Daalder said. "Nor is the U.S. spending more because allies are spending less ... our defense spending is a national decision and is determined by our national security and defense needs."

"Countries falling short means not that they owe anyone money, but that countries have weaker militaries than we would like," added Stephen Saideman, a professor at Carleton University's Norman Paterson School of International Affairs. "NATO is not a country club."

...The United States does pay for approximately 22 percent of a small, commonly-funded budget that concerns civilian and some military expenses, Daalder noted. That budget, which is less than $5 billion, is funded by all NATO members based on a cost-sharing formula that considers gross national income and other factors.

But Daalder said "no one is in arrears or delinquent on any payments" for that budget, either.

A note for people who voted for and still support Trump and bought his MAGA hats: 22% is much smaller than 90%. That was your math lesson of the day. Now go take a civics class and then come back and apologize to the rest of us-- and the rest of humanity-- for what you did.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

The Voice Of Russia
by Noah

There he was, Wednesday morning, the Manchurian President, flanked by his coterie of supportive treasonous handmaidens (White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, NATO Ambassador Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo). Trump sat at a breakfast meeting with the heads of NATO member nations with one goal in mind, berate them and begin the end of NATO. It was as if Trump was there as a lone courtesy invitee, invited to represent Russia, NATO's chief adversary. Who better than the imbecile who will go down in history as Putin's Puppet.

Trump is a man who fulfills dreams, Putin's dreams. The thing Putin wants most of all, his number one wish, is to drive a wedge between America and Germany, not mention the rest of Europe. So there Trump was, haranguing Germany over a pipeline deal they have with Russia, while he "failed" to mention his own former Secretary of State's deals with Russia. His little Putin-serving rant will probably become even more hypocritical if and when his own financial dealings with Putin rise to the surface some day. The Wednesday morning tirade came as no surprise. He's had it in for Germany's Angela Merkel for a long time. We'll leave the whys and wherefores about that to the shrinks who will spend decades analyzing Oh Great Orange President Crazypants. For now, we can just point to Trump's behavior and know that, if he isn't officially a Russian FSB agent, he is, for all intents and purposes, exactly that.

For decades now, no matter the party of our presidents, NATO has been a key to American overall status and prosperity, and a deterrent to Russian expansionism. That is obviously something that neither Putin or his puppet can abide. The Manchurian President's pro-Russian posturing on Wednesday was all about deliberately setting out to wreck the framework that both protects European democracies (however strong or weak) and keeps us as the number one power in the world, a status that benefits our way of life, status and benefits that have already been steadily eroding for too many Americans for other reasons all too often related to the blatant greed that would be autocrats and oligarchs live by.

Remember The Voice Of America? It still exists, at least for now. To us it can seem quaint and often very self-serving but it is also a beacon to others and has been since 1942. Yes, it pushes the policies of the United States government, for better and for worse, but it also gives voice to our artists and our culture; a culture which, sometimes, is more open than that of the listener. Without it, way too many people in the world know nothing about us, good or bad. Traditionally, even a current president's speeches and other remarks are broadcast on the V.O.A. Now, in 2018, the world's people tune in to hear about America and hear the words of a severely mentally ill traitor who pushes for the kind of isolationism and contempt for others that led directly to World War Two; words that go unchallenged in any serious manner by any of our so-called leaders of today. Contrast that with the words of an actual president:

We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and success of liberty.
President John F. Kennedy, January 20, 1961

"Support any friend." "Assure the survival and success of liberty." Those words are the opposite of the dreamworld of Trump and Putin. Imagine how those, particularly in what was East Germany and is Eastern Europe, who are old enough to remember Russian oppression and the Russian version of The Wall reacted to Trump's support of Putin's dream. And, by the way, where are any politicians who will stand up to Trump and say such words today.

On Monday, the Manchurian President sits down in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin, a man he envies in so many ways. He has already out Neville Chamberlained Neville Chamberlain in appeasement just by meeting with him. FOX "News" and the rest of the Republican Party will continue to call both men "Great Leaders." Will Trump's Big Daddy Vladdy one day put his puppet's face on a Russian stamp, hero of the empire and all that? I'm sure Trump dreams about it, along with having his visage on a U.S. stamp. You know Trump dreams of that just as he dreams of being "president for life" and being able to shoot journalists like his other pals Durterte and Kim do. There is one qualification for a person being on a U.S. stamp that Trump might not like, though. You have to be dead, so, there is that.

NATO Leaders Are Experiencing Trump's Mental Instability Today-- And His Devotion To Vladimir Putin

Armchair psychologists have been analyzing Señor Trumpanzee for years but long before diagnoses like cognitive decline, Malignant Narcissism, antisocial personality disorder, dementia, sociopath, Finasteride Psychotic Disorder, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and psychosis, everyone who followed Trump for years noticed that he constantly projects. That's a psychological defense mechanism-- often hostile, in which individuals attribute characteristics they find unacceptable in themselves to another person. Often a mechanism of paranoia, Freud believed projection to be a defense mechanism often used as a way to avoid uncomfortable repressed feelings. Feelings that are projected may be controlling, jealous, angry, or sexual in nature-- most often occuring when individuals cannot accept their own impulses or feelings.

On Wednesday Señor T accused Germany of being "a captive of the Russians." An absolutely stunning and classic example of projectionism. Angela Merkel didn't diagnose Trump when she responded.

Angela Merkel pushed back against Donald Trump’s extraordinary tirade against Germany on the first day of the NATO summit in Brussels on Wednesday, denying her country was “totally controlled” by Russia and saying it made its own independent decisions and policies.

In less blunt language than the US president’s, the German chancellor made the point that she needed no lessons in dealing with authoritarian regimes, recalling she had been brought up in East Germany when it had been part of the Soviet Union’s sphere of influence.

Arriving at Nato headquarters only hours after Trump singled out Germany for criticism, Merkel said: “I have experienced myself how a part of Germany was controlled by the Soviet Union. I am very happy that today we are united in freedom, the Federal Republic of Germany. Because of that we can say that we can make our independent policies and make independent decisions. That is very good, especially for people in eastern Germany.”

...At his first meeting of the summit, with the NATO secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, Trump described the relationship between Germany and Russia as “inappropriate.”

NATO officials had been nervously awaiting the first meeting as an indicator of how Trump-- who arrived in Brussels on Tuesday night-- would behave over the next two days. Within minutes they had their answer.

This summit is shaping up to be the most divisive in Nato’s 69-year history. Normally, NATO summits are mostly fixed in advance and proceed in an orderly fashion. Trump’s first words signalled this one was not going to be like that.

He complained that German politicians had been working for Russian energy companies after leaving politics and said this too was inappropriate. Germany was totally controlled by Russia, Trump said.

With Stoltenberg looking on uncomfortably throughout, the US president was unrelenting. “I think it is very sad when Germany makes a massive oil and gas deal with Russia,” Trump said. “We are supposed to be guarding against Russia, and Germany goes out and pays billions and billions dollars a year to Russia.

“We are protecting Germany, we are protecting France, we are protecting all of these countries and then numerous of the countries go out and make a pipeline deal with Russia where they are paying billions of dollars into the coffers of Russia. I think that is very inappropriate.”

He added: “It should never have been allowed to happen. Germany is totally controlled by Russia because they will be getting 60-70% of their energy from Russia and a new pipeline.

Yesterday, perhaps anticipating Trump's unhinged tirade, the Senate passed 97-2 an amendment to set legislative guardrails in support of NATO, expressing support for NATO, its mutual self-defense clause and calling on the Regime to rush its whole-of-government strategy to counter Russia’s meddling in the U.S. and other democracies.

In a Senate floor speech Tuesday, Reed callled America’s commitment to NATO “ironclad” and Trump’s meeting with Putin “ill-advised.”

“I join my colleagues this afternoon in support of the motion which sends an important message to our allies, our partners, and our adversaries that the United States is unwavering in its support of Europe free from the threat of external aggression and in support of the rules-based international order that has promoted international security for decades,” Reed said.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was expected Wednesday to debate a separate measure supporting NATO. One proposed amendment to it, from panel chairman Bob Corker (R-TN), would reaffirm support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and condemn “Russia’s illegal invasion and attempted annexation of Crimea.” A second proposed amendment from Sen. Robert Menendez, the panel’s ranking member, would reaffirm support for U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Trump’s wavering on NATO has led allies to question America’s trustworthiness, Menendez (D-NJ) said in a blistering floor speech.

“In the absence of U.S. presidential leadership, I want to make clear to our allies abroad, as well as our adversaries in the Kremlin, as to where members in the United States Senate stand,” said Menendez, adding that the chamber stands for the rule of law, an international order based on democratic values and with its allies.

“President Trump’s slap-dash approach to foreign policy, borne out of heated campaign rallies, instead of thoughtful Cabinet meetings, has real implications for our national security,” Menendez said. “Such reckless behavior by President Trump has weakened the United States on the global stage and created a more dangerous world for our citizens and our troops serving abroad.”

Menendez ripped Trump for saying his meeting with Putin would be the easiest of his four-country trip, as a sign Trump “would rather deal with an autocrat than negotiate with democratically elected leaders.”

“Let’s be clear: Meeting with a thug intent on undermining American democratic values should not be easy and it should not be chummy,” he said.

Menendez’s pursuit for a vote on Russia sanctions follows Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) saying-- after a trip to Russia last week-- the Senate may have gone too far with mandatory sanctions against a host of Russian entities, leaving Trump with too little negotiating room on other matters.

Johnson, chairs the Foreign Relations subcommittee for Europe, told the Washington Examiner, the sanctions, “don’t seem to be having a real horrible economic effect, not in Moscow anyway.”

...Outside of the Senate chamber, lawmakers expressed fears over both tone and substance of Trump’s talks at the NATO and Putin summits.

On the heels of leading a Republican delegation to Russia last week, Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Richard Shelby cautioned Trump to be well-prepared, especially after the summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un produced, “a lot of optics and not a lot of substance yet.”

“My advice to the president, if he wanted any, would be: Careful, you’re dealing with a tough man, a smart man, and he probably wants to get something and give nothing in return,” Shelby (R-AL) said of Putin.

CNN: "NATO allies wonder if the West can withstand the Trump presidency. Weakening NATO is Putin's top priority-- and was certainly the top quid pro quo for the Kremlin's assistance in stealing the 2016 election. There has never been an unpatriotic American president before. It's hard to fathom. It's got to be dealt with. A supine and enabling Congress is not going to deal with it, making the November midterms the most consequential election in any of our lifetimes. I hope all DWT readers are prepared, not just to vote, not just to work for candidates, not just to contribute to candidates, but to drag any friends or relatives who are too lazy to vote-- especially in midterms-- to the polls. This one really is just plain too important.

Why Does Putin Have Two Members Of Congress From California Representing Russian Interests?

Un-American Activities In The House by Chip Proser

Former Texas Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison (R), was appointed U.S. ambassador to NATO by Señor Trumpanzee. Yesterday she was a guest, from Brussels, on both Face the Nation and on Fox News Sunday. On the latter, she told Dana Perino that she thinks "Russia is trying to flip Turkey. They're trying to flip many of our allies. They want to destabilize the strongest defense alliance in the history of the world and that is NATO." On the former she told Margaret Brennan that "we are seeing Russia with malign on so many fronts right now, especially... on social media, where they are sowing discontent and even false information to try to divide our allies." Note in the video below how uncomfortable she is when Brennan asks her for reassurance that Trump won't recognize Putin's swallowing up of Ukraine and how she dodges the question entirely:



This week Trump is expected to slam NATO members (our allies) and then fly off the Helsinki to report back to the man who hated him the presidency. Putin didn't help Trump steal the election because he thinks he would be a great president. Quite the contrary; Putin executed the great coup in the history of Russia because Trump is weak and incompetent idiot who agreed to deliver on all Russia's priorities, destroying NATO being one of them.

Many Republicans in the Senate and House-- for all their rubber stamping and enabling of Trump-- are very uncomfortable with Trump's supine posture towards the Kremlin and worried about what he's going to give away to Putin at their secret meeting in Helsinki next week. But that's not the case with Putin's two congressional puppets, both from California, Orange County's Dana Rohrabacher (CA-48) and the Central Valley's Devin Dunes (CA-22). A few days ago, Rohrabacher and Ted Lieu, also from California, but a patriot, were guests on Fox's The Issue Is. Forget for a moment that Rohrabacher is certifiably insane, Lieu reminded viewers that Rohrabacher was warned by the FBI that Russia was trying to use him as "an agent of influence [and] that he was so close to Russia that they had a code name for him... I don't know why he's that close to Russia but, it is what it is," while Fox showed footage of Rohrabacher alone in an office shaking hands with Putin.



A year ago the Washington Post reported that, after a meeting with the prime minister of Ukraine (one day after Russian spies hacked the DNC for Trump), Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy, Congress' top 2 Republican House Leaders, initiated a conference call with GOP members. On that call, McCarthy told the members that he "guarantees" them that the DNC hack was by the Russians to get the opposition research on Trump. He added, "There's two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump... Swear to God." Ryan, nervous, interjected: "This is an off the record. No leaks, right? This is how we know we're a real family here." A crime family? It leaked within hours of course. Ryan and McCarthy denied the conversation ever happened when The Post approached them with the transcript. They called it fiction. After claiming the transcript was "false," once The Post told them one of their "family members" had made a recording of the conversation and turned it over to the paper, Ryan said McCarthy was only joking. No one mentioned at the time that there were three Republicans on Putin's payroll and that McCarthy had left off his close friend and ally, Devin Nunes.

At some point even Nunes' constituents, whose congressman does more for Trump and Putin than he does for them, are going to demand better representation in Washington. Rowan Scarborough wrote, admiringly, about Nunes' latest escapade over the weekend for the very right-wing Washington Times, Devin Nunes calls for House probe of 42 Obama-era anti-Trump activists. "Nunes," he wrote, "is referring 42 Obama administration officials, FBI agents and outside political activists to a House task force for an investigation into how the Obama Justice Department targeted the Donald Trump campaign. If the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and Judiciary Committee agree, their task force would conduct the most extensive probe to date on anti-Trump government operations in 2016." He's asking fellow super-partisan crackpots, Trey Gowdy (R-SC) and Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), both of whom are retiring in January, for assistance.

Last year, amid a probe into Russian election interference, Mr. Nunes veered from the Trump collusion narrative. His new inquiry was sparked by indications that a piece of evidence driving the FBI probe-- the Democratic Party-financed dossier-- was unverified and at worst a hoax.

Former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, who was paid by Democrats to write the dossier and who told a Justice official he was “desperate” to destroy the Trump candidacy, is not one of the Nunes 42.

Fusion GPS hired Steele to investigate his connections to the Russians during the Republican primary and it was the GOP propaganda sheet, the Washington Free Beacon who got the money from Marco Rubio backer Paul Singer to pay for it. After Rubio was crushed by Trump, Singer closed upon his wallet and Mark Elias, an establishment Democratic attorney started paying Fusion GPS for Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The Washington Times is aware this started as a Rubio effort, funded by Singer, but would rather deceive its readers into thinking Hillary Clinton was behind it. Now that's fake news.

I haven't been a big fan of either Nunes' or Rohrabacher's general election opponents, respectively Andrew Janz and Harley Rouda. But both were the legitimate winners of their primaries and... at least neither is a Blue Dog. More important, the Democrats in their districts choose them and there is no one else who can get rid of the two Putin patsies. They both raised plenty of money. Rouda raised $1,939,411 and has $600,203 in cash left, more than Rohrabacher's $433,735. And Janz raised $1,852,763, not as much as corporate whore Nunes, but enough to run a competitive race. I wouldn't hesitate for one moment to urge Orange County voters to replace Rohrabacher with Rouda and I'd only hesitate for a moment before urging voters from Clovis and Fresno down through Dinuba and Visalia to Tulare to replace Nunes with Janz. Putin doesn't deserve to be represented by two members of Congress-- let alone two members from California. Do you know what the word shanda (שאַנדע) means? That what it means.

The Great Negotiator, Fresh From His Catastrophic North Korea Tomfoolery, Is About To Uproot 7 Decades Of U.S. Policy In Europe

Estonia is a tiny little country on the Baltic Sea. It covers 17,462 square miles, slightly larger than Massachusetts-- about the size of New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware combined. The population is 1,319,133, about the same as Maine. It's a digitally advanced country with universal healthcare, very high education levels and, for that matter, free education. It has a high income economy. And it ranks very high on the UN's Human Development index. Historically, the country has been ruled by Germany, Danmark, Sweden and, with a few brief periods of independence, from 1710 until 1990 by Russia. If it was permitted, you could stand with one foot in Estonia and one foot in Russia. Estonia's NATO membership (starting in 2004) has seen-- and still is-- as a provocation by the Russians-- and by Trump. They are also a member of the EU. They have sent troops to back the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Last week, Foreign Policy reported that James Melville, a career diplomat, currently the U.S. Ambassador to Estonia, resigned in disgust after Trump's latest anti-European rant.

Melville, who has served as a diplomat for 33 years and as ambassador to Estonia since 2015, was due to retire soon but said in a private Facebook post announcing his retirement that Trump’s behavior and comments accelerated his decision.

“A Foreign Service Officer’s DNA is programmed to support policy and we’re schooled right from the start, that if there ever comes a point where one can no longer do so, particularly if one is in a position of leadership, the honorable course is to resign. Having served under six presidents and 11 secretaries of state, I never really thought it would reach that point for me,” he wrote in the post, which was obtained by Foreign Policy.

“For the President to say the EU was ‘set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank,’ or that ‘NATO is as bad as NAFTA’ is not only factually wrong, but proves to me that it’s time to go,” he wrote, citing Trump’s reported comments in recent weeks that have unnerved U.S. allies.

The post surprised several State Department officials who worked with Melville, describing him as a consummate professional who never let domestic politics impact his job.

The resignation comes ahead of a pivotal NATO summit, where the United States’ closest historic allies fear that Trump will lambast them and further isolate Washington from its allies after heated disputes over trade, defense spending issues, and the U.S. exit from the Iran nuclear deal. Allies fear that the optics of Trump trashing allies in Brussels, followed by a meeting in Finland with Russian President Vladimir Putin, will undercut an already anemic trans-Atlantic partnership.

Melville said he believed in the U.S. support for the European Union and NATO to his “marrow.”

Trump has been undermining both-- to the point where observers are wondering whether Trump is "an ignorant and destructive fool or operates as some sort of agent" for the Kremlin. Josh Marshall posted that "the upshot appears to be the same."

One of Putin's top priorities-- certainly what he insisted Trump do in return for Russian help in handing him the White House-- was to withdraw U.S. troops from Germany, something Trump is working on now. The Washington Post gave the excuse conceited by Putin and repeated by Trump's regime: "Trump was said to have been taken aback by the size of the U.S. presence, which includes about 35,000 active-duty troops, and complained that other countries were not contributing fairly to joint security or paying enough to NATO."

This is in advance of the NATO summit next month which will be followed shortly after by a summit with Vladimir Putin. The German troop presence news comes after we learned that in April Trump tried to persuade President Macron of France to leave the European Union. Days ago Trump told a crowd in North Dakota that “the European Union, of course, was set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank.” Trump apparently ‘joked’ about pulling the US out of NATO with the Prime Minister of Sweden. More strikingly, he told G-7 members in Canada earlier this month that “NATO is as bad as NAFTA.”

What theTimes of London calls a “senior EU diplomat” says of these comments and gambits, “we are more and more concerned they are not just incidents. It starts to look like a very worrying pattern” and refers to “an American doctrine in which there are no friends, only enemies” with no “rules-based order.” “It is very dangerous,” the source told the paper.

...[T]he role of Russia, the efforts to liquidate NATO and the continuing and aggressive courtship of Putin show it is part of some broader agenda. Someone, eventually, will have to place some check on Trump’s power. For the moment, the entire cadre of political appointees in the administration and the leadership of Congress appears entirely inert and passive, if not outright supportive. It is important to remember that the President has zero constitutional authority over trade policy. That is 100% on loan from Congress. It’s remarkable that this is all happening before our eyes and no one.

We’re in a lot of danger.

It's expected that at their meeting on July 16, Trump and Putin will discuss the U.S. recognizing Russia's dismemberment of Ukraine and Trump may well start a process of ending U.S. sanctions involved with the annexation of the Crimea. One of Trump's excuses is that the Russians have "spent a lot of money on rebuilding it" adding, like an imbecile, gratuitously, that "President Obama allowed that to happen which is very unfortunate... It was during President Obama’s term in office." I bet that scares the bejesus out of Estonia, and every other NATO member anywhere near Russia.

And, Now... Something Crazy From The Fringe-- And My Best Wishes To Robert Mueller

Almost everyone and every organization has a wikipedia page, right? But not James George (Jim) Jatras and not the American Institute in Ukraine which he claims to be Deputy Executive Director of. And not Anthony T Salvia, the Executive Director of the American Institute in Ukraine. (I did find an Anthony T La Salvia, who in 2014 was an unsuccessful Democratic primary judicial candidate in Maricopa County. It can't be the same guy-- at least I don't think so.) More recently he served as a stooge for then-President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine who he wrote deserved a Nobel Peace Prize.

It's hard to find much about Jatras but I have a feeling he's a pretty well-known figure on some of the fringes of the pro-Putin extreme right. Like Paul Manafort, he was a Yanukovych partisan, paid to oppose NATO, the EU and the West. Eventually Yanukovych was overthrown and fled to Russia, where he still lives. Manafort is in prison awaiting trial and/or pardon. I don't know anyone who's quite sure where Jatras is but this is what he told Kremlin propaganda and disinformation organ, Sputnik last October:

[F]ederal authorities in our country today can throw anybody today in jail they want. They simply have to pile on some charges, try to catch you in some inconsistencies and they can bring criminal charges against you. It's generally assumed that this is being done to put the squeeze on somebody else; maybe they want to throw Manafort in jail, but what they really want is for him to divulge some sort of information about the campaign that they think he may be hiding... But the question is where Mr. Mueller wants to go with this, and I think a lot of people suspect that there is a partisan thrust to his investigation, that he has a lot of very partisan Democrats on his team and the real target is President Trump, not Mr. Manafort or General Flynn.

...Sputnik: Hard evidence of any real collusion is something that's been lacking right the beginning has it not, and do you think we're likely to see it by the end of this investigation, which is something that Russia has been asking for, for some time?

Jim Jatras: I don't know that we will, and the way the American media operates, I don't know if anyone expects them too-- it's enough for them to engage in speculation and hyperbole and say Russia this and Russia that-- when there is no real Russian connection at all.

And when you raise these points, it only appears in outlets like Sputnik or like RT or in the alternative media like Antiwar.com or Zerohedge, and this is almost like samizdat-- it's almost like it doesn't exist here because it's not on CNN or in the mainstream media.

Sounds pretty familiar, doesn't it? Yesterday Jatras had a guest post at Zerohedge. A little info on him that hasn't been covered up. He was born (somewhere) in 1955, claims to have gone to Penn State and to have gotten a law degree at Georgetown. He also claims to have worked in the U.S. consulate in Tijuana from 1979 through 1981 and as a foreign service officer for Russian affairs from 1981 to 1985 and then a policy analyst for always unnamed Senate Republicans until 2002. He's all over YouTube-- often on Russian propaganda outlets-- as a "former diplomat," which appears to be a major exaggeration of what he really was. Like this:



In 2015 Paola Chavez and Madison Jaros interviewed Jatras for ABC News: Meet the Man You’ve Never Heard of Who Desperately Wants to Be Vice President. Trump didn't pick him but it's an interesting interview. Jatras is anti-Choice, anti-LGBTQ, pro-NRA, anti-immigrant and, as he puts it, "anti-phony 'free trade' deals."

Yesterday's Zerohedge post could have been written by Trump, if Trump could write, or by a Putin propagandist (although, apparently it was)-- It's Time For America To Cut Loose Our Useless So-Called "Allies".

Let’s get one thing straight: the United States has no real allies. There are countries we dominate and control, more properly termed client states or even satellites. (True, given Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s lock-stock-and-barrel ownership of the American political class, it seems rather that we are their clients, not the other way around...) Conversely, on an almost one-to-one correspondence, countries that are not satellites are our enemies, either currently (Russia, North Korea, Iran, Syria) or prospectively (China).

But do we have any actual allies-- that is, countries that provide mutual security for the United States, and whose contributions actually make us Americans safer and more secure in our own country?

Try to name one.

Let’s start with the granddaddy of our alliances, NATO. How does having a mutual defense pact with, say, virulently anti-Russian Poland and the Baltic States make America more secure? How does, say, tiny corrupt Montenegro, contribute to US security? Are these countries going to defend America in any conceivable way? Even if they wanted to, how could they possibly?

For that matter, against what ‘threat’ would they defend us? Is Latvia going to help build Trump’s Wall on the Mexican border?

‘Our NATO allies help out in Afghanistan,’ we are told.  NATO-Schmato-- it’s Americans who do almost all the fighting and dying. It’s our treasure being wasted there. Maybe without the fig leaf of an alliance mission, we might long since have reevaluated what we still are doing there after 17 years.

But comes the answer, ‘Russia!’ Except that Russia isn’t a threat to the United States. Despite their hype even the most antagonistic Russophobic countries in NATO themselves don’t really believe they’re about to be invaded. And even if they were, that still doesn’t make Russia a threat to us-- or wouldn’t except for the very existence of NATO and a forward American presence on Russia’s borders and in the Black and Baltic seas littorals. How does gratuitously risking conflict with the one country on the planet whose strategic arsenal can annihilate us make Americans safer?

As Professor Richard Sakwa has observed, ‘NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.’

Let’s look at other supposedly valuable alliances.

Why do we need South Korea and Japan? ‘China!’ But except for a nuclear stockpile much smaller than our intercontinental deterrent China doesn’t present a military threat to us. ‘Yes, but Beijing poses a danger to South Korea and Japan.’ Maybe, maybe not. But even if that is so why is it our problem?

Why do we need Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and bunch of other Middle Eastern countries? We aren’t dependent on energy from the region as we arguably were when Jimmy Carter proclaimed a vital national interest there four decades ago. ‘Well then, Iran!’ But the Iranians can’t do anything to us. ‘Yes, but they hate Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc., etc.’ Again, what’s that got to do with us?

In each case the argument of a US interest is a tautology.

The US ‘needs’ allies for the sole purpose of defense against purported threats not to us but to those very same allies. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone.

It would be bad enough if these faux alliance relationships were only detrimental in terms of getting embroiled in quarrels in which we have no interest, wasting money and manpower in areas of the world where our security is not at stake. But there’s also a direct economic cost right here at home.

Jatras and Kislyak

Based on the claimed need for “allies” US trade policy since World War II could almost have been designed to undermine the economic interests of American workers and American producers. Starting with Germany and Japan, our defeated enemies, we offered them virtually tariff-free, nonreciprocal access to our huge domestic market to assist with their economies’ recovery from wartime destruction; in return, we would take their sovereignty: control of their foreign and security policies, as well as their military and intelligence establishments, plus permanent bases on their territory.

This arrangement became the standard with other countries in non-communist Europe, as well as some in the Far East, notably South Korea. As much or more than puffed-up claims of military threats (and companies that benefit from inflated military spending) lopsided trade is the glue that keeps the satellites in place. In effect, our “allies” cede geostrategic control of their own countries and are rewarded at the expense of domestic American economic interests. Already of questionable value in its heyday, this pattern not only survived the end of Cold War 1 but continued to grow, contributing to the rise of Cold War 2.

Put into that context, this is where Trump’s tariffs dovetail with his other blasphemies, like expecting the deadbeats to pony up for their own defense. He challenges them to reduce tariffs and barriers to zero on a reciprocal bilateral basis-- knowing full well they won’t do so because it would spoil their cozy arrangement at the expense of American workers. He threatens the sanctity of the North Atlantic Treaty’s vaunted Article 5 obligation of mutual defense on whether countries meet a two percent of GDP level of military spending-- knowing that few of them will since they don’t in fact face any external military threat and would rather keep the money.

In his own unvarnished, zigzaggy way, Trump is doing what he said he would: putting America and Americans first. As he has said, that does not mean hostility towards other countries, whose leaders have aduty to put their countries and peoples first as well. It means both stopping our allies’ sandbagging us, while restoring to them their unsought-for-- and for many of them, undesirable-- sovereignty and independence.

In the final analysis, what the likes of Rick Wilson are really afraid of is disruption of a decades-old, crooked racket that has been so lucrative for countless hangers-on and profiteers. As James P. Pinkerton, former aide to Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, describes it:

‘[T]he basic geopolitical foundations of the last seven decades are being challenged and shifted-- or, as critics would prefer to say, being subverted and betrayed. Yet in the meantime, even as his myriad foes prepare their next political, legal, and punditical attacks, Trump is the man astride the world stage, smiling, shaking hands, signing deals-- and unmistakably remaking the old order.’

Let’s get on with it.

Into the Swamp by Nancy Ohanian

Has Putin Managed To Rupture The Western Alliance?

Der Spiegel, the German equivalent of Time has never exactly been a fan of Señor Trumpanzee and he has adorned their covers very frequently. I can't imagine he has any of those covers adorning the walls of his golf clubs. The newest one, Time for Europe to Join the Resistance expresses a sentiment widely shared by most of the world (outside of Russia, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Oklahoma, Hungary and other fascist-oriented countries). The Spiegel editors assert that Trumpanzee's "decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal marks the temporary suspension of the trans-Atlantic alliance" and ask what Europe must do next. Sounds exactly like the payoff Putin wanted most for getting the incompetent and deranged Trump into the White House.

Trump's renown is rooted in American hero myths. Trump says that women like Carla Bruni lust after him, something that women like Carla Bruni vehemently deny. Trump says he is exorbitantly rich, yet Trump ran himself into the ground with his casinos to the point that he was 295 million dollars in debt in 1990. He was bailed out by the banks and by his father. The greatest myth, though, has to do with Trump's alleged negotiating expertise. This too is nonsense. Trump was never proficient in the art of the deal. As a businessman, he paid far too much for substandard properties and has shown no patience as a politician. He isn't curious. His preparation is nonexistent. Strategy and tactics are both foreign to him. Trump is only proficient in destruction. And that's what he does.

He backed out of the Paris climate agreement while promising a "better deal for America." But nothing came of the promise, neither a plan nor meaningful talks. In Trump's Washington, the only thing that matters is dismantling the legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Trump also promised to improve Obama's health care plan, but the details are complex and bothersome. So Trump destroyed Obamacare and has done nothing to replace it.

Now, he is playing the same game on the world stage with the Iran nuclear deal. Trump refers to it as "the worst deal ever," which is why he has now pulled the U.S. out of it. The negotiations that resulted in the deal in 2015 were a masterpiece of international diplomacy, but there are no plans in place to launch new talks.

Trump wants to bring the Iran regime to its knees with sanctions, but domestic political considerations in Tehran make it unlikely that the country will buckle. Leaders who demonstrate weakness in Iran are discarded. It seems more likely that they will close ranks. Iran-supported groups like Hezbollah are likely to pour fuel on the fire of conflicts in Yemen or Lebanon-- as close as possible to Israel's border. Iran presumably won't pursue the path of extreme escalation, since such a path wouldn't be beneficial, but it will likely cease allowing observers into the country, stop providing information on its uranium enrichment activities. It will seek to conceal what the West would like to know.

And what are the benefits of Washington's radical move? There are none. Just chaos where there was once order. Just American capriciousness after decades of stability.

The most shocking realization, however, is one that affects us directly: The West as we once knew it no longer exists. Our relationship to the United States cannot currently be called a friendship and can hardly be referred to as a partnership. President Trump has adopted a tone that ignores 70 years of trust. He wants punitive tariffs and demands obedience. It is no longer a question as to whether Germany and Europe will take part in foreign military interventions in Afghanistan or Iraq. It is now about whether trans-Atlantic cooperation on economic, foreign and security policy even exists anymore. The answer: No. It is impossible to overstate what Trump has dismantled in the last 16 months. Europe has lost its protective power. It has lost its guarantor of joint values. And it has lost the global political influence that it was only able to exert because the U.S. stood by its side. And what will happen in the remaining two-and-a-half years (or six-and-a-half years) of Trump's leadership? There is plenty of time left for further escalation.

...Europe should begin preparing for a post-Trump America and seek to avoid provoking Washington until then. It can demonstrate to Iran that it wishes to hold on to the nuclear deal and it can encourage mid-sized companies without American clients to continue doing business with Iranian partners. Perhaps the EU will be able to find ways to protect larger companies. Europe should try to get the United Nations to take action, even if it would only be symbolic given that the U.S. holds a Security Council veto. For years, Europe has been talking about developing a forceful joint foreign policy, and it has become more necessary than ever. But what happens then?

The difficulty will be finding a balance between determination and tact. Triumphant anti-Americanism is just as dangerous as defiance. But subjugation doesn't lead anywhere either-- because Europe cannot support policies that it finds dangerous. Donald Trump also has nothing but disdain for weakness and doesn't reward it.

Clever resistance is necessary, as sad and absurd as that may sound. Resistance against America.

Did Putin's Hacking Place Trump In The Oval Office? No One Will Ever Admit It... Or Will They?

One thing that "has been decided," apparently, is that no one in a position of authority is ever going to undermine the U.S. electoral system by admitting the Kremlin really hacked the election itself-- like the shitty very hackable electronic voting machines. The entire national security establishment always, always claimed the Russians didn't tamper with the voting results. But, as I've said all along, they didn't know what they were talking about. An exhaustive report at The Intercept yesterday-- based on a Top Secret leaked document (that resulted in the immediate arrest of the leaker, 25 year old Reality Leigh Winner)-- proves the Russians could have done plenty-- which makes me think they probably did switch a few key counties for Trump. (Putin, of course, denied everything to Megan Kelly. Question: does Vladimir Putin lie as much as Trump? Answer: Yes-- or even more.)

Short version: According to the purloined document, the GRU (Russian Military Intelligence, so, not random "patriots") "executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election... [part of] a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure."

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions… The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.

...The NSA analysis does not draw conclusions about whether the interference had any effect on the election’s outcome and concedes that much remains unknown about the extent of the hackers’ accomplishments. However, the report raises the possibility that Russian hacking may have breached at least some elements of the voting system, with disconcertingly uncertain results.

...The NSA has now learned, however, that Russian government hackers, part of a team with a “cyber espionage mandate specifically directed at U.S. and foreign elections,” focused on parts of the system directly connected to the voter registration process, including a private sector manufacturer of devices that maintain and verify the voter rolls. Some of the company’s devices are advertised as having wireless internet and Bluetooth connectivity, which could have provided an ideal staging point for further malicious actions.

As described by the classified NSA report, the Russian plan was simple: pose as an e-voting vendor and trick local government employees into opening Microsoft Word documents invisibly tainted with potent malware that could give hackers full control over the infected computers.

But in order to dupe the local officials, the hackers needed access to an election software vendor’s internal systems to put together a convincing disguise. So on August 24, 2016, the Russian hackers sent spoofed emails purporting to be from Google to employees of an unnamed U.S. election software company, according to the NSA report. Although the document does not directly identify the company in question, it contains references to a product made by VR Systems, a Florida-based vendor of electronic voting services and equipment whose products are used in eight states [California, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, New York, North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia].

The spear-phishing email contained a link directing the employees to a malicious, faux-Google website that would request their login credentials and then hand them over to the hackers. The NSA identified seven “potential victims” at the company. While malicious emails targeting three of the potential victims were rejected by an email server, at least one of the employee accounts was likely compromised, the agency concluded. The NSA notes in its report that it is “unknown whether the aforementioned spear-phishing deployment successfully compromised all the intended victims, and what potential data from the victim could have been exfiltrated.”

...[T]he hackers apparently got what they needed. Two months later, on October 27, they set up an “operational” Gmail account designed to appear as if it belonged to an employee at VR Systems, and used documents obtained from the previous operation to launch a second spear-phishing operation “targeting U.S. local government organizations.” These emails contained a Microsoft Word document that had been “trojanized” so that when it was opened it would send out a beacon to the “malicious infrastructure” set up by the hackers.

The NSA assessed that this phase of the spear-fishing operation was likely launched on either October 31 or November 1 and sent spear-fishing emails to 122 email addresses “associated with named local government organizations,” probably to officials “involved in the management of voter registration systems.” The emails contained Microsoft Word attachments purporting to be benign documentation for VR Systems’ EViD voter database product line, but which were in reality maliciously embedded with automated software commands that are triggered instantly and invisibly when the user opens the document. These particular weaponized files used PowerShell, a Microsoft scripting language designed for system administrators and installed by default on Windows computers, allowing vast control over a system’s settings and functions. If opened, the files “very likely” would have instructed the infected computer to begin downloading in the background a second package of malware from a remote server also controlled by the hackers, which the secret report says could have provided attackers with “persistent access” to the computer or the ability to “survey the victims for items of interest.” Essentially, the weaponized Word document quietly unlocks and opens a target’s back door, allowing virtually any cocktail of malware to be subsequently delivered automatically.

According to Williams, if this type of attack were successful, the perpetrator would possess “unlimited” capacity for siphoning away items of interest. “Once the user opens up that email [attachment],” Williams explained, “the attacker has all the same capabilities that the user does.” Vikram Thakur, a senior research manager at Symantec’s Security Response Team, told The Intercept that in cases like this the “quantity of exfiltrated data is only limited by the controls put in place by network administrators.” Data theft of this variety is typically encrypted, meaning anyone observing an infected network wouldn’t be able to see what exactly was being removed but should certainly be able to tell something was afoot, Williams added. Overall, the method is one of “medium sophistication,” Williams said, one that “practically any hacker can pull off.”

The NSA, however, is uncertain about the results of the attack, according to the report. “It is unknown,” the NSA notes, “whether the aforementioned spear-phishing deployment successfully compromised the intended victims, and what potential data could have been accessed by the cyber actor.”

...At a December press conference, President Obama said that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin in September not to hack the U.S. election infrastructure. “What I was concerned about in particular was making sure [the DNC hack] wasn’t compounded by potential hacking that could hamper vote counting, affect the actual election process itself,” Obama said. “So in early September, when I saw President Putin in China, I felt that the most effective way to ensure that that didn’t happen was to talk to him directly and tell him to cut it out and there were going to be serious consequences if he didn’t. And in fact we did not see further tampering of the election process.”

Yet the NSA has now found that the tampering continued. “The fact that this is occurring in October is troubling,” said one senior law enforcement official with significant cyber expertise. “In August 2016 warnings went out from the FBI and DHS to those agencies. This was not a surprise. This was not hard to defend against. But you needed a commitment of budget and attention.”

The NSA document briefly describes two other election-related Russian hacking operations. In one, Russian military hackers created an email account pretending to be another U.S. election company, referred to in the document as U.S. company 2, from which they sent fake test emails offering “election-related products and services.” The agency was unable to determine whether there was any targeting using this account.

In a third Russian operation, the same group of hackers sent test emails to addresses at the American Samoa Election Office, presumably to determine whether those accounts existed before launching another phishing attack. It is unclear what the effort achieved, but the NSA assessed that the Russians appeared intent on “mimicking a legitimate absentee ballot-related service provider.” The report does not indicate why the Russians targeted the tiny Pacific islands, a U.S. territory with no electoral votes to contribute to the election.

...All of this taken together ratchets up the stakes of the ongoing investigations into collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives, which promises to soak up more national attention this week as fired FBI Director James Comey appears before Congress to testify. If collusion can ultimately be demonstrated-- a big if at this point-- then the assistance on Russia’s part went beyond allegedly hacking email to serve a propaganda campaign, and bled into an attack on U.S. election infrastructure itself.

Whatever the investigation into the Trump campaign concludes, however, it pales in comparison to the threat posed to the legitimacy of U.S. elections if the infrastructure itself can’t be secured. The NSA conclusion “demonstrates that countries are looking at specific tactics for election manipulation, and we need to be vigilant in defense,” said Schneier. “Elections do two things: one choose the winner, and two, they convince the loser. To the extent the elections are vulnerable to hacking, we risk the legitimacy of the voting process, even if there is no actual hacking at the time.”

Throughout history, the transfer of power has been the moment of greatest weakness for societies, leading to untold bloodshed. The peaceful transfer of power is one of the greatest innovations of democracy.

“It’s not just that [an election] has to be fair, it has to be demonstrably fair, so that the loser says, ‘Yep, I lost fair and square.’ If you can’t do that, you’re screwed,” said Schneier. “They’ll tear themselves apart if they’re convinced it’s not accurate.”

So what did Putin get for his efforts? First and foremost a dysfunction, stressed-out America coming apart at the seams and incapable of leading the free world. Writing for USAToday this morning, Nicholas Burns, a former under secretary of State serving in both Democratic and Republican administrations, showed how Trump is delivering Putin's #1 policy objective-- wrecking the U.S. alliance with Europe.

And Mark Warner (D-VA) says the report from The Intercept doesn't even get to how much the Russians were meddling with the electoral process all over the country (not just in those 8 states). He said the extent of the Russian attacks were much broader than has been reported-- and that the hacking is on-going. (June 20, for example, is the date of the special election in GA-06 and the state's voting system was hacked, probably at Putin's orders though the Georgia Republican Party doesn't seem in the slightest bit concerned and refuses to use paper ballots to insure election integrity.)

America and Europe are experiencing their most significant crisis in decades. President Trump’s recent visit to NATO and the EU was the least successful of any U.S. president in seven decades, exposing deep ideological divisions and a widening gulf of trust across the Atlantic. Last weekend’s terrorist attacks in London had the same effect. Trump repeatedly criticized London Mayor Sadiq Khan for telling citizens not to be alarmed by the attacks, when Khan actually said they should not be alarmed by a heavy police presence. Trump’s tweets did not go down well in stoic Britain, where the World War II maxim, “keep calm and carry on,” still holds.

The policy differences alone are profound. European leaders want a historic free trade agreement with America, but Trump’s nationalist economic strategy led him to reject it. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is determined to maintain tough EU and U.S. sanctions on Russia over its occupation of Ukraine. Trump appears more interested in a rapprochement with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The chasm is deepest and most emotional on climate change. Trump’s announcement that America will pull out of the historic 2015 Paris Agreement is deepening distrust among European citizens and their governments, which consider it an urgent priority.

When I served as U.S. ambassador to NATO, America had a bruising argument with France and Germany over the Iraq War in 2003. We buried the hatchet eventually by joining forces in Afghanistan and negotiating a nuclear deal with Iran. We knew the NATO alliance was worth preserving. Trump has downplayed the importance of those longstanding ties-- according to Politico, even to the point of removing from his prepared speech an affirmation of NATO's Article 5, the commitment by member nations to defend one another.

That is why the current crisis is far more threatening to the long-term future of the alliance than past disagreements. Trump’s ambivalence about NATO and skepticism about the EU are seen by European leaders as an open break with 70 years of U.S. commitment to the continent.

The heart of the problem is Trump’s view of Europe, and Germany in particular, as an economic competitor rather than a strategic partner. This is a sea change in American attitudes towards Europe. All of Trump’s predecessors dating to President Truman have prized Europe’s political and military alliance with America. Trump’s boorish behavior in Brussels and his intemperate tweets criticizing Merkel (and now Khan) have only reinforced the doubts about him in Europe.

If Trump sticks to this course, there will be real costs for the United States. Europe remains our leading trade partner and the most important investor in the U.S. economy. The 27 European members of NATO remain the largest group of U.S. allies in the world. On nearly every important U.S. global priority, Europe is a key partner. We need the United Kingdom, France and Germany to persuade Iran to adhere to the 2015 nuclear deal. Trump may soon ask Europe to contribute additional troops to NATO’s Afghan mission. The U.S. fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria will be seriously undermined without British and French support. America needs NATO allies to hold the line against Putin’s territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe.

...Trump’s bull-in-a-china-shop approach has backfired. He would do better to push the allies in private but acknowledge publicly that the majority of them actually increased defense spending after Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. All, including Germany, have pledged to reach the 2% target by 2024. Pushing on this open door would have been more effective than lecturing leaders such as Merkel in an election year... Trump’s bumbling Europe strategy could turn out to be one of the most significant U.S. foreign policy failures of the post-World War II era.

And exactly why Putin took-- and is still taking-- the risks he took to put Trump in the White House-- and to keep him in power.

photo by N. Ohanian