Trump Lost-- Biden Will Be A Better President Than He Was

 

On election day, reporting for NPR, Yara Bayoumy wrote about the authoritarian and fascist leaders around the world-- from Netanyahu and Viktor Orbán to Putin and Bolsonaro-- who preferred Trump and now have to contend with Biden, a typical dues-paying member of the military industrial complex. Besides Trump's "various torn-up international accords, the retreat of traditional American leadership from the global stage and the cementing of the 'America First' doctrine," he wrote, "there has been perhaps no more glaring consequence of Trump's tenure than his embrace of strongmen who largely eschewed the Western-based human rights and rules of law agenda. By figuring out relatively early how to win favor with Trump, these leaders often leveraged their close relationship with him to cement their own power at home. Some borrowed his rhetoric such as decrying 'fake news' to crack down on dissent, some appealed to his sense of pomp by throwing lavish ceremonies and others adopted his brazenly transactional approach to geopolitical dealmaking." Bayoumy forgot to mention the widespread belief that many of these-- and other-- foreign leaders were bribing Trump and his family personally.

Writing before Biden had won, Bayoumy wrote that "None of these Trump 'bromances,' whether forged for pragmatic or ideological reasons, are likely to continue with the same fervor with Biden. The 77-year-old former vice president, who has made clear his distaste for Trump's embrace of strongmen, is nevertheless the product of a traditional Democratic establishment that has also tolerated unsavory rulers in the name of preserving U.S. strategic interests. Still, if Biden wins, we can expect he'll seek to bring human rights and the rule of law as important pillars of U.S. foreign policy.

Putin

As candidate, Trump made clear his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. And throughout his presidency-- the Robert Mueller investigation and the ongoing Russian attempts to interfere with the election notwithstanding-- Trump has mostly refrained from severely criticizing Putin.

..."I think the very fact that Biden was Obama's vice president already makes him not a friendly figure in Russia," says Moscow-based political analyst Masha Lipman. Biden, who repeatedly highlights the importance of preserving NATO, is likely to adopt a tougher line against Russia.

The only thing that helps the Kremlin, Lipman says, is more polarization and turmoil in the United States. "Turmoil means the United States [is] weakened," she says. "This is what the Kremlin can actually benefit from, not an improvement in relations."

Xi

On the campaign trail and throughout his presidency, Trump has railed against China but has also voiced admiration for Chinese leader Xi Jinping as he tried to secure trade deals beneficial to the United States. Who could forget his January tweet praising Xi over his handling of the novel coronavirus? As the virus ravaged the West, Trump changed course, using China as a punching bag and saying his relationship with Xi has since frayed. Putting aside the leaders' relationship, the two countries are probably experiencing the worst ties in years. The Trump administration has sanctioned Chinese officials, targeted Chinese tech companies, arrested alleged Chinese spies and regularly challenges the country's claims in the South China Sea.

Biden regularly touts the tough line he took as vice president against Xi. Biden says he would force China to "play by the international rules." He frames the issue as bringing together democracies to counter "abusive economic practices." Tony Blinken, the Democrat's top foreign policy adviser, told NPR that Biden would focus on "our competitiveness, on revitalizing our democracy, on strengthening our alliances and partnerships, on reasserting our values. That's how you engage China from a position of strength." China, for its part, sees the U.S. as a declining power. In its recently revealed five-year plan, Beijing signaled it expects more American-led tariffs on its exports and more sanctions on its tech firms but that it's also confident to meet those challenges.

Netanyahu

The Israeli prime minister is one of Trump's closest allies. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moved the U.S. Embassy there-- even though Palestinians seek part of the city for their future capital. He recognized Israeli claims to sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Netanyahu has touted his friendship with Trump in his campaigns. Trump has tweeted his support for Netanyahu and hosted him at the White House. Just a week ago, the Trump administration lifted a ban on U.S. taxpayer funding for Israeli scientific research carried out in Jewish settlements in Israeli-occupied territory. Netanyahu says, "Israel has never had a better friend."

Danny Danon, who most recently served as Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, says Biden would also be "good with Israel." Nevertheless, Biden was vice president during Obama and Netanyahu's famously frosty relationship, and it's hard to see the two leaders sharing as close a relationship as Trump and Netanyahu.

Mitchell Barak, a pollster in Jerusalem, says that a Biden administration would probably want to take a more evenhanded approach with Israel. Under Trump, ties with the Palestinian leadership broke down. "They're going to start to try and make it a little more evenhanded or to look more evenhanded. And the free lunches that we've been getting up until now-- we're going to have to pay for some of those things," Barak says. "And then Netanyahu does not have the advantage because it's going to be more of an antagonistic relationship."

Modi

The two leaders have had each other's backs even as they've both faced criticism for discriminating against minorities. When he was pressed to question Prime Minister Narendra Modi about anti-Muslim riots in India, Trump gave him a pass. "And I will say that the prime minister was incredible on what he told me. He wants people to have religious freedom," Trump said during his visit to India earlier this year.

A Biden-Harris administration is likely to voice stronger rhetoric on Modi's record on human rights, the environment and Kashmir. Still, India is seen as an important counterweight to China in the region, and Biden will not want to upset that.

"Since the George W. Bush administration, the United States has recognized India's potential as a natural balancer to China. It's been a proponent of the U.S.-India relationship due to India's strategic location, its potential as a market," says Akriti Vasudeva at the Stimson Center, a think tank in Washington, D.C.

Andrés Manuel López Obrador

When he launched his campaign for president in 2015, Trump vilified Mexicans: "They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people." He also repeatedly threatened tariffs on Mexican exports. But over the years, and especially as he worked to secure the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, Trump and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's relationship has grown closer. Critics of López Obrador say that he caved in to Trump by adopting harsher policies toward Central American migrants. But analysts say the Mexican leader didn't have much choice, particularly as he faced Trump's threats of tariffs and forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall.

...Every president since Franklin Roosevelt has visited Mexico-- except for Trump. In fact, Biden even visited then-candidate López Obrador in 2012. Biden made more trips just to Guatemala in his two terms as vice president than Trump has made to all of Latin America as president, and would likely look to work with López Obrador on immigration. As vice president, he promoted aid to Central American countries and pressured their leaders to curb corruption.

Bolsonaro

It's no surprise that the "Trump of the Tropics," as Bolsonaro has come to be known, has a close relationship with the U.S. president. They're both brash nationalists who share similar views on the coronavirus pandemic-- belittling the science, pooh-poohing the need for masks and saying the whole thing is just exaggerated. They both got COVID-19 and recovered. And they both believe shutting down the economy through lockdowns is more harmful than the virus. Bolsonaro's first international trip was to Washington, and he's since visited Trump three more times, including at Mar-a-Lago.

"It would be a sort of earthquake," says Rubens Ricupero, a former Brazilian ambassador to the United States. Biden would likely pressure Bolsonaro on the erosion of human rights protections, including for Indigenous people, but it's the Brazilian leader's positions on the Amazon that would really be scrutinized. Biden wants to join forces with other counties to create a $20 billion fund for Brazil as part of an effort to press Bolsonaro to end rising deforestation. Still, Biden would need Brazil's cooperation on Venezuela and containing China, Brazil's biggest trading partner.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

The two leaders have had a bumpy relationship, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan also understood the benefit of a good rapport with Trump and preying on his instincts-- particularly one that has to do with Trump's anathema of having U.S. troops in the "endless wars." With one phone call last year, Erdogan got Trump to move U.S. troops in Syria out of the way so that Turkish soldiers could attack Kurdish forces, which were U.S. allies in the fight against ISIS. Still, though Trump has called Erdogan a "good friend," he also at one point threatened to "totally destroy and obliterate" the Turkish economy.

...Turkey might find it has to rein in the adventurous foreign policy it enjoyed under Trump. Biden would also most likely pressure Turkey on its human rights record-- particularly its jailing of journalists and other critics. Significant issues also divide Ankara and Washington, including Turkey's purchase of Russian missiles.

Mohammed bin Salman

Breaking with decades of U.S. tradition, Trump chose Saudi Arabia as his first international trip as president. In Riyadh, the Saudi royal family lavished Trump and his family with an extravagant ceremony. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has since been reaping the rewards. The Trump administration has barely pressured him-- over the kingdom's air campaign in Yemen, which has killed thousands of civilians, or his crackdown on dissent. And following the 2018 killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Trump stood by the crown prince's side even as U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that the Saudi royal had approved the killing and as bipartisan lawmakers condemned him.

The former vice president has cast the kingdom as a "pariah"-- making it clear Salman would likely have a tougher time making inroads with a potential Biden administration. Biden has also threatened to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, a top buyer of U.S. weaponry.

"So there might be some cuts in terms of particular arms sales. There might be symbolic punishments. But the Biden administration is going to want a good relationship with Saudi Arabia despite the many problems," says Daniel Byman, a Middle East specialist at Georgetown University.

Orbán

Europe's populists, often shunned by Brussels, have found a natural ally in Trump, who shares their disdain for migrants, the media and dissent. But it's Hungary's prime minister, Orbán, who leads the pack. He was the only EU leader to endorse Trump in 2016. Four years and a White House visit later, Orbán calls Trump a friend and predicts he will win reelection. The populist leaders of Slovenia (Melania Trump's native country) and Serbia have also endorsed the president.

Previous U.S. administrations shunned Hungary, and the EU is investigating Hungary and Poland, run by another Trump-friendly government, for rule of law violations. Ivan Krastev, a political scientist who leads the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria, says the two countries have used their alliance with Trump to make it clear "that they have an alternative" to Brussels.

Biden mentioned Poland and Hungary when slamming Trump's foreign policy during a town hall last month, adding, "This president embraces all the thugs in the world." The remark angered Hungary's government, but Orbán is already casting Biden as part of the international liberal elite. "We know well American Democratic governments' diplomacy, built on moral imperialism," Orbán wrote in a recent essay in the pro-government newspaper Magyar Nemzet.

Hey! How do you talk about "the thugs of the world" without mentioning Rodrigo Duterte, Kim Jong-un, and Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, 3 more Trump cronies. Way back in late September, Foreign Policy published a piece by Paul Musgrave, a professor of political science, urging the country to confront "the record of wrongdoing left by the Trump administration, both the crimes committed in office and crimes overlooked due to his power. Grappling with the Trump post-presidency will include delicate questions about how to investigate potential criminal and civil wrongdoing committed by the president, his associates, and his family. And there is a chance the country may not be up to this task. There’s one clear precedent for worrying: President Gerald Ford’s pardon of his criminal predecessor (and tax cheat) Richard Nixon, and the subsequent elite embrace of that pardon. That means it’s important to lay out the case for why a potential President Biden should not pardon Trump for offenses committed against the United States. To be sure, Biden has pledged not to do so. Yet there have been signs that he may be going wobbly. Whereas in 2019, Biden emphasized that Trump’s actions merited scrutiny ('This guy does all these things that put us in jeopardy and he gets off?' he said to Radio Iowa), in an August NPR interview he emphasized instead that pursuing criminal charges against a former president would be 'a very, very unusual thing' and 'probably not very-- how can I say it?-- good for democracy.'" Of course Trump was a very, very unusual thing and certainly not good for democracy. No one is calling for him to be executed-- well, almost no one-- the way the Nicolae Ceaușescu was. But he should certainly be investigated and, if found guilty, punished.

The American political system has no tradition of official disgrace or damnatio memoriae. All presidents are honored, even those who were awful or, in the case of President John Tyler, disloyal. Tyler, the tenth president, not only ran a disastrous administration but ended his public life as a congressman in a brief-lived treasonous slave power. And yet even Tyler receives official remembrances, including a presidential dollar coin featuring his image.

That coin illustrates the natural arc of American political culture: institutional ignoring of the misdeeds of the powerful in the name of "healing." Yet this norm does not heal; it harms.

It makes a mockery of Americans’ belief that they have a government of laws, not of men, if those laws do not apply to the men who enforce the laws. It constitutes a denial of justice and an amnesty granted only to the powerful. Left unchallenged, this norm will protect Trump from the reckoning that the country needs.

Consider how the system dealt with Nixon.

Time has so effaced the details of Nixon’s malfeasance that he has regained a patina of statesmanship. Thus, Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, could recently tweet a favorable comparison between Nixon and Trump, arguing that that “Nixon, for all his flaws, was a conservative who abided by norms.”

Haass’s viral tweet reflects an irony that, in death, Nixon has finally been accepted by the sort of institution whose rejections kindled in him a lifelong resentment of the Eastern Establishment he tried to join. In doing so, it reflects a general amnesia about why Watergate was so bad that illustrates how far elite culture will go to forgive the crimes of the powerful.

...This revisionist history may explain why, in a 2014 CNN survey, only 51 percent of Americans reported considering Watergate a “very serious matter” that revealed unusual corruption in the Nixon White House, while 46 percent reported that the scandal was “just politics-- the kind of thing both parties engage in.”

[Alan] Brinkley’s textbook later blandly mentions that President Gerald Ford, Nixon’s successor, suffered political consequences from his decision to offer Nixon a blanket pardon for wrongdoing while in office.

Pointedly, Ford had rejected pardoning Nixon during his confirmation hearings as vice president. Once in office, though, a chorus of voices lobbied him to change his mind, claiming that neither the country nor Nixon himself might survive the trial.

Ford’s pardoning of Nixon was unpopular at the time, with 53 percent of Americans rejecting it. It has since become conventional wisdom among America’s institutional elite that Ford’s act was merciful and correct. In 2001, a panel of eminences recruited by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation honored Ford’s pardon of Nixon by giving him its Profiles in Courage Award.

...By downplaying the seriousness of Nixon’s crimes, and stopping further consequences, the pardon made it possible to reduce Watergate from the White House horrors to the break-in. It also enabled Nixon’s rehabilitation.

When Nixon died, President Bill Clinton ordered the closing of government offices “as a mark of respect for Richard Milhous Nixon.” In a cloying eulogy delivered “on behalf of a grateful nation,” Clinton praised Nixon’s legacy in domestic and foreign policy, without a single reference to Watergate or abuse of power other than the banal acknowledgment that “He made mistakes.”

The healing myth has become part of a bipartisan catechism even though its central premise-- that the pardon healed the country-- is unsupportable. In the long run, as [Elizabeth] Holtzman said, “the Nixon pardon has had terrible ramifications.” It set the stage for later pardons related to executive self-interest, including George H.W. Bush’s pardons of many figures involved in the Iran-Contra scandal.

If U.S. political culture can congratulate itself for rehabilitating Nixon, then the temptations for a Biden administration to do the same for Trump will be powerful. Doing so will let the administration move on to other priorities, sensible centrists will argue. And the next election is only two years away-- do you really want to have Trump still in the news by then?

Advocates of a pardon or other forms of clemency will point to other factors as well. They will argue that, in a polarized country, the specter of politicized prosecutions will raise the possibility that vengeful Republicans will retaliate later. And indeed, it would be disastrous for democracy were each administration to misuse prosecution against its political enemies.

Yet given what we already know about the president’s finances and conduct in office, an investigation of the Trump administration is unlikely to be politicized in any meaningful sense. It is only a refusal to prosecute that could be politicized, in the sense of being guided by political calculation rather than a commitment to the rule of law. (That would apply doubly to the idea that a pardon could help ease Trump out of the White House without strife.)

More sophisticated observers might caution that even potentially justifiable prosecutions could have deleterious effects on U.S. politics and the country’s standing in the world. The prosecutions of Brazil’s most recent presidents-- Lula, Dilma, and Michel Temer-- did much to clear the way for the election of the country’s disastrous current president, Jair Bolsonaro. Similar concerns have been raised about other prosecutions elsewhere, like Ecuador’s conviction of former president Rafael Correa, which barred him from a return to politics.

But it’s strange to argue that democracy depends on not prosecuting those who commit crimes. In France, even a prime minister caught misusing public funds may now go to jail rather than retire to a villa. And although some have criticized South Korea for prosecuting its ex-presidents (over half of whom are now in prison), measures like the Varieties of Democracy index show that Seoul’s record on liberal democracy is stronger than that of the United States.

It should not be surprising that democracy and prosecutions of former officials can go together. That is, after all, the entire point of the rule of law. Holding officials to account forms a critical part of strengthening democratic institutions. And the ballot box is only one way to do that.

That is why Biden must not waver. If a former president has never been prosecuted in American history, that’s because the last time the country had a chance to do so it was denied that opportunity. Far from being bad for democracy, a sober, lengthy, and deliberative investigation would be good for establishing a record of the rot in the Trump administration. And it would be a major boost for liberal democracy and anti-corruption efforts by demonstrating that in mature democracies, officials face consequences.

Having a president who committed crimes is not unprecedented in American history. What would be unprecedented would be to end this long national nightmare by letting them face the same justice that any other American should.

My job at Blue America is to try to figure out what a candidate will be like once he or she gets into Congress. Promises can be one thing; behavior is another. Once I figured out how to do it, we've backed candidates like Ted Lieu, AOC, Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Omar, Bonnie Watson Colemand who have become sterling members of Congress. Biden was the easiest one I ever looked at and I've predicted for decades that if he ever gets into the White House he will be one of the worst presidents in history, not like the decidedly mediocre presidents we've suffered from JFK through Obama, but more in line with the aforementioned Tyler. He won't be as terrible as Trump but...

Foreign Correspondent: Trump Plays Both Sides Against the Middle-- Is He A Hawk? Is He A Peacenik? The President Keeps Us Guessing.

-by Reese Erlich
@ReeseErlich

President Donald Trump has convinced Republican isolationists and hawks that he supports their views. That’s a neat trick, since the two groups hold opposing positions.

Trump gets support from hardline interventionists for his efforts to overthrow governments in Iran and Venezuela, while backing the aggressive policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In a speech for the Republican National Convention that was recorded in Jerusalem, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Americans “are more safe, and their freedoms more secure, because President Trump has put his America First vision into action. It may not have made him popular in every foreign capital, but it has worked.”

On the other hand, libertarian Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, describes Trump as the first President in a generation “to seek to end war rather than start one.” Paul went on to tell the Republican National Convention that “We must not continue to leave our blood and treasure in Middle East quagmires.”

While Trump hasn’t halted any Middle East wars, he has ordered modest troop reductions in Syria and Iraq, and negotiated a fraught agreement in Afghanistan. However, on any given day, the US has 45,000-65,000 soldiers and sailors stationed in the Middle East, more than at the beginning of Trump’s term.

So Trump pursues interventionism in practice while claiming he’s against the forever wars. He purposely takes contradictory positions, according to Scott Horton, a libertarian Internet radio host and editorial director of AntiWar.com. [Disclosure: “Foreign Correspondent” is carried by AntiWar.com.]

“He takes all sides of all issues, so there’s something for everyone,” Horton says in an interview. “Trump is seen as outside the political establishment. He’s a disruptor.”

In reality, Horton says, Trump’s foreign policy has been a disaster. He escalated the air war in Afghanistan and the war in Yemen. He escalated fighting in Somalia. NATO added new members from Eastern Europe and increased spending. As Horton dryly puts it, “He hasn't started any new wars because we already at war with every country we could be at war with.”

Impulsive, transactional decisions

Trump doesn’t adhere to any particular ideology, according to Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. Rather he makes impulsive, transactional decisions.

 “I don’t think Trump has a coherent foreign policy,” Zunes tells me. “The Trump Doctrine can be summed up as ‘What’s in it for me?’”

Trump’s past attempts to break with some interventionist policies was met with strong opposition from the foreign policy establishment and ultimately floundered.

In 2018, Trump opened direct talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. By 2019, the administration indicated it could accept North Korea as a nuclear power, as part of negotiations toward a comprehensive peace accord.

Hawks in both parties attacked Trump for cozying up to a dictator. Trump’s advisors, such as uber-hawk former National Security Advisor John Bolton, opposed any agreement. Trump backed off when it became apparent his image was being tarnished.

Now Trump is having trouble making deals even with his own Pentagon brass. A recent scathing article in The Atlantic quotes military leaders and advisors who say Trump disparaged Marines buried at a World War I cemetery as “suckers” for getting killed.

That’s consistent with his public attacks on the late Senator John McCain as a “loser” because he was captured during the Vietnam War.

On Labor Day, Trump held a press conference that set a new low for hypocrisy. The Commander in Chief denied making the disparaging remarks, then opened fire on Pentagon leaders.

Top military leaders, Trump said, “want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs and make the planes and make everything else stay happy.”

Once again, Trump strikes a populist stance to attack others while ignoring his own, far worse record. The President regularly boasts of his success in promoting arms sales, notably to dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia. He has surrounded himself with military men tied to the arms industry, including current Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, a former Raytheon lobbyist.

Apparently you’re not part of the military-industrial complex until you disagree with Trump.

My guess is that some military brass are leaking stories about Trump to thwart his possible use of the Insurrection Act to mobilize regular troops after a Trump loss in the November election. If the election is close, and demonstrations break out, Trump could violate the Constitution and use the military to stay in power. The leaks are coming from those generals who won’t play ball.

Electoral rhetoric

Most Americans oppose the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s why Trump is ramping up his anti-interventionist rhetoric, trying to outflank Joe Biden from the left. But many independents and even some Republicans recognize Trump’s rhetoric as phony.

Meanwhile, Trump has angered the foreign policy establishment-- both Democratic and Republican-- for questioning US participation in  NATO and being “soft on Russia.” Seventy Republican national security officials signed an open letter criticizing Trump and declaring their intention to vote for Joe Biden.

“The power elite is terrified of him because he is not one of them,” says radio host Horton. “They’ve gone to war against him.”

But that doesn’t necessarily translate into votes for Biden. Professor Zunes says the foreign policy experts themselves are upper-middle-class, mainstream Protestants, who don’t have much mass influence.

“Biden may take a small chunk out of Trump’s Episcopalian vote,” says Zunes. “They don’t represent many actual votes in key states that Biden will have to win.”

Zunes, a strong critic of Biden’s interventionist foreign policy, says Biden is still better than Trump. Biden voted against the 1991 Gulf War, and opposed the wars in Libya and Yemen.

Most importantly, Zunes says, Biden is more malleable and subject to grassroots pressure.

“Biden may be forced to take more seriously the anti-war majority in the Democratic Party,” he says.

We’ll see.

Trump Has Been Bragging About HIS Foreign Policy. Meanwhile America's Foreign Policy Is A Shambles

Last week, anyone who didn't think "foul play" by Putin after reading reports of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny falling into a coma is either terribly naïve or a Trumpist Republican. And sure enough, after he was rescued an flown to Berlin, he was diagnosed with having been poisoned with a cholinesterase inhibitor, a family of central nervous system toxic agents.

Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee released copies of Trump's pre-presidential love letters to Putin as part of their investigation into Trump's collaboration with Russia during the 2016 election.

Trump’s pandering to the Russian president was on full display in a 2007 letter congratulating Putin on being named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year. The letter read, “Congratulations on being named Time’s magazine ‘Man of the Year’-- you definitely deserve it. As you probably heard, I am a big fan of yours!”

The phrase “I am big fan of yours” was emphasised by the now US President with a thick underline.

The praiseful content doesn’t end there, with a 2013 letter containing an attempt by Trump to persuade Putin into attending a Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, an event owned by Trump himself.

The letter asked Putin to be Trump’s date for the evening, reading, “I want to take this opportunity to personally invite you to be my guest of honor in Moscow on November 9th. I know you will have a great time.”

In an attempt to double down on the persuasion (in true all-caps Trump-style), an added hand-written message read, “THE WORLD”S MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMEN!”

Putin did not attend the contest.

The letters are part of a more serious issue surrounding the 2016 election, with key findings from the Senate Select Committee revealing that Putin had weaponised the hacking of Democratic campaign emails, with Trump receiving assistance from various Russian pass-throughs.

Further findings reveal that former campaign chair Paul Manafort was deemed a threat to US intelligence due to his contacts with Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik.

The report essentially confirmed that the president had lied in a written testimony about not remembering a conversation with Roger Stone, who utilised his Julian Assange WikiLeaks back-channel to access Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails.

While Trump’s unwavering love of Putin was put on full display, the report all but confirmed something more serious. Trump and his officials sought out and accepted Russian interference during the election.

Last week Juan Cole had a typically Trump-era headline at Informed Comment: Trump Walks Alone: Former U.S. Allies Britain, France, Germany Join Russia And China in Forcefully Rejecting Trump Iran Sanctions. The European countries hit Trump with a strong rebuke, thoroughly sick and tired of Trump's dysfunctional policies, and they sound more like Russia and China. Trump and Pompeo are now running around screeching that they're going to sanction the rest of the world. Trump should be dragged out of the White House and put in an insane asylum.

Trump’s Desperate, Last-Ditch Effort To Hike Tensions With Iran-- This Might Be The Final Stretch For His Failed Policy Of Maximum Pressure

Iranian civilians are endangered by recent sabotage carried out  against both military and civilian targets. Here a woman sells spices in the bazaar. Photo: Reese Erlich

-by Reese Erlich
author, The Iran Agenda Today: The Real Story Inside Iran and What's Wrong with U.S. Policy.

During the past month, Iran has suffered a half-dozen explosions and fires at military and civilian sites. A bomb blew up near the Parchin missile base outside Tehran, Iran’s capital. Fires broke out at an electric power station and aboard seven ships in a southern port city.

Iranian government authorities say some of the incidents were accidents. But the most serious, it appears, was an act of sabotage.

On July 2, a blast ripped through the main assembly hall at Natanz, a facility that produces centrifuge parts essential for enriching uranium for Iran’s nuclear power program.

No one officially took credit for the sabotage, but the New York Times reported that a “Middle East intelligence” source admitted that Israel was behind the bombing. An Israeli newspaper later identified the source as Yossi Cohen, head of the Mossad intelligence agency.

Analysts say such a brazen attack, which constitutes an act of war, would need the approval of officials in Washington, D.C.

“If the US did not participate in the attack directly, at the very least it gave Israel its consent,” Muhammad Sahimi, a professor at the University of Southern California and Iran expert, says in an interview.

Washington and Tel Aviv think such attacks, along with the unilateral U.S. sanctions, are a low-risk means of pushing back on Iran. They are an escalation of Washington’s “maximum pressure” campaign—which has notably failed and will likely be abandoned after the U.S. presidential election.

“There’s a sense that there’s a bit of desperation right now” in both capitals, says Trita Parsi, executive vice president and co-founder of the Quincy Institute, an anti-interventionist think tank in Washington, D.C. He likens the attempts to those of medieval archers fighting a losing battle: “Empty your quiver... shoot all your arrows.”

October surprise?

Some analysts speculate that the Trump Administration is seeking to provoke Iran into military retaliation. Trump could then launch a war, rally support at home, and win the election. It’s a classic “October Surprise” or even a “Wag the Dog” scenario.

But Foad Izadi does not agree with that analysis.

“Iran is not Iraq,” Izadi, an assistant professor of American studies at the University of Tehran, tells me by phone from Tehran. “Any overt war runs the danger of serious US casualties. He should know, after being President for almost four years, attacking Iran has consequences.”

Izadi does not think that “starting a new war with Iran a few months before the election” is in Trump’s interest. “Even a limited war is not useful for him.”

But that doesn’t preclude other forms of U.S. aggression.

On July 23, a U.S. fighter jet flew close to an Iranian civilian airliner on a routine flight from Tehran, as it crossed Syria on its way to Beirut, Lebanon. The U.S. military claimed to be conducting a “visual inspection” of the plane in order to “ensure the safety of coalition personnel at At Tanf garrison,” says Captain Bill Urban, spokesperson for US Central Command.

Urban claimed the F-15 fighter jet kept 1,000 yards away from the airliner. But a video shot by passengers shows a jet flying much closer. The proximity of the F-15 forced the Iranian pilot to drop 14,000 feet in four minutes, injuring several passengers.

According to Izadi, the US military has no business “inspecting” a civilian airliner flying in a normal civilian air corridor over Syria. In fact, he says, the United States “has no right to be in Syria at all.”

The Trump Administration keeps several hundred troops in Syria in defiance of the Syrian government and without authorization from the United Nations or any other international body.

Iranians are particularly sensitive about US interactions with civilian planes. In 1988, the U.S. Navy shot down an Iranian airliner, killing all 290 passengers and crew. After initially providing false information about where and how fast the plane was flying, Washington admitted to shooting down the airliner and paid compensation to the victims’ families.

“These things unify the Iranian people,” Izadi says. “Whether they like the government or not, Iranians don’t want to be on a plane that will be shot down.”

Iranian response

To date, the Iranian government has not overtly responded to the U.S. provocations. It seems more likely that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is waiting for the U.S. election on November 3, which could result in the election of Joe Biden.

“Iranians are holding their fire, playing the long game,” Parsi says. “They fear it may be a trap to give Trump an excuse to go farther.”

Iran’s conservative hardliners, meanwhile, denounce Rouhani as vacillating in the face of a US and Israeli onslaught. But Parsi says these hardliners “are playing a political game. They understand the logic of not doing anything for now, but that doesn’t prevent them from calling Rouhani weak.”

Sahimi, a close observer of Iranian politics, agrees that “there is a lot of ‘hot’ rhetoric against President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif by the hardliners. But I do not expect any practical action in the near future.”

Depending on what policy the United States adopts after the elections, Sahimi expects “the response to come at a later time and in a manner and at locations where neither Israel nor the US would expect.”

Biden has pledged, if elected, to reverse course on Iran. Izadi believes a Biden Administration would change the Trump policy of maximum pressure. “Whether doing it through rejoining the nuclear agreement or coming up with some other policies, we have to wait and see,” he says.

Parsi, who is familiar with the views of Biden’s Iran advisors, says the new administration would likely call for “compliance for compliance.”

“Biden could lift sanctions by executive order without rejoining the nuclear accord,” he says. “That’s a necessary step, but not sufficient.” The new administration will also have to work with Congress and lay the groundwork for restoring the nuclear accord.

Despite the current crisis, Izadi says, “I’m optimistic. Trump’s policies are not working. The U.S. will have to change, and the change will be for the best.”

If, Like Putin, You Bet Trump Would Be The Worst President Ever, You Would Be Raking In The Bucks Today

There was never any doubt-- at least not among people with 3-digit IQs-- that Donald Trump would be a catastrophic president. He isn't intelligent or even vaguely competent and he is completely self-obsessed and narcissistic. The Democrats gambled that running even a horrible and widely-hated candidate like Hillary would be a safe bet in the kind of lesser-of-two evils contest they like best. The Democrats lost the bet. And they're doing it again this year. Maybe they'll win this time.

Trump's glaring and undeniable shortcomings were at the base of why Putin was so enthusiastic about supporting him. Worldwide, America's allies saw clearly what a mess Trump would be likely to make of everything he touched. They were right. Yesterday, Gallup released a poll showing that worldwide disapproval of American leadership since Trump entered the White House has been the highest ever, especially in Europe. In Europe a median 61% disapproving of U.S. leadership was a new high and in Asia, the level was 32%, slightly less than the 2017 record low of 30%. The Asian levels were bolstered by relatively high Trump approval ratings in 6 authoritarian countries-- Israel (64%), Mongolia (62%), Turkmenistan (62%), the Philippines (58%), Nepal (54%), and Myanmar (53%).

A day early, Washington Post reporter Dan Balz noted that "America’s standing in the world is at a low ebb. Once described as the indispensable nation, the United States is now seen as withdrawn and inward-looking, a reluctant and unreliable partner at a dangerous moment for the world. The coronavirus pandemic has only made things worse. President Trump shattered a 70-year consensus among U.S. presidents of both political parties that was grounded in the principle of robust American leadership in the world through alliances and multilateral institutions. For decades, this approach was seen at home and abroad as good for the world and good for the United States. In its place, Trump has substituted his America First doctrine and what his critics say is a zero-sum-game sensibility about international relationships. America First has been described variously as nationalistic, populistic, isolationist and unilateralist. The president has demeaned allies and emboldened adversaries such as China and Russia."

Trump has failed dismally in confronting the pandemic-- and that isn't just obvious in Florida, Texas, California and Arizona. It's also obvious in Italy, Germany, France and Japan. Allies have been re-thinking their relationships with the U.S.-- and praying Trump is defeated in November. Balz reminded his readers that in response to Trump's COVID-failure European nations have taken the unprecedented step of blocking Americans from entering their countries. Yesterday, it was announced that Trump's latest national security advisor, Robert O'Brien-- who has refused to wear a mask or practice social distancing-- tested positive for the coronavirus.

Balz continued that "From abroad, the United States is seen as having lost confidence in itself as it grapples not only with the pandemic but also with long-standing political divisions and a racial reckoning over the treatment of black Americans. The perceived loss of confidence among Americans in turn has led others to question the United States’ appetite or capacity for a collaborative leadership role at a time when the health and economic crises call out for committed global cooperation... [O]verall assessments of the effect of his approach to the world are harsh-- with fears that the pandemic will do further damage over time."

Before the pandemic, the president took a number of steps that signaled a retreat from collective involvement abroad, pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, the Iran nuclear deal and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact. He raised doubts about the U.S. commitment to NATO. After a long-running quarrel with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, he has called for the withdrawal of more than a quarter of the 34,500 U.S. troops stationed in Germany.

Since the pandemic struck, Trump has continued to pull back. When other nations’ leaders gathered by video to rally behind and provide funding for the development of a coronavirus vaccine, the United States skipped the meeting. When many world leaders participated in a World Health Organization assembly on the pandemic, the president was absent. Trump’s anger with China over the virus ultimately prompted him to withdraw the United States from the WHO.

“People are stunned about the effect of incapable leadership, or of polarizing leadership, of not being able to unify and get the forces aligned so you can address the problem [of the coronavirus],” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, a vice president of the German Marshall Fund and director of its Berlin office. “And that, of course, results in a nosedive in how you view [the United States]. What you’re seeing is a collapse of soft power of America.”

“I think the U.S. is seen from my perspective as being involved in its own internal reckoning-- like the rest of the world doesn’t really exist,” said Robin Niblett, director and chief executive of Chatham House, a think tank in London. “It’s America trying to battle with historical and contemporary demons that as much as anything are a result of its own internal contradictions and tensions and strengths and weaknesses. And it’s not all bad. I’m just saying it is like really seeing somebody’s psychological flaws exposed at a moment of stress.”

...“It hurts our brand. It hurts the status of our institutions. It’s going to weaken our economy and our economic power and soft power as a consequence,” said Stephen J. Hadley, who was a national security adviser to President George W. Bush. “It’s potentially a real setback.”

...[B]y the numbers, Trump had an immediate and negative impact on perception of American leadership. A Gallup survey of impressions of world leadership after the first year of Trump’s presidency saw the rating of U.S. leadership plummet by 20 points-- lower than Bush’s worst rating.

The following year, approval of U.S. leadership remained similarly low, and disapproval was higher than for the leadership in Germany, China and Russia. “In this climate, China’s leadership has gained a larger advantage in the ‘great power competition,’ and the other player, Russia, is now on a more even level with the U.S.,” the Gallup report said.

The Pew Research Center issued a report in January on international attitudes toward the United States and found 64 percent of people across 32 countries saying they had no confidence in Trump as the U.S. leader, though impressions of the U.S. as a whole remained positive. Trump’s ratings were slightly better than the previous year. Pew analysts said that was because of increased support from those on the right in other nations, including those who support right-wing populist parties in their countries.

The same phenomenon showed up in an annual Gallup survey of satisfaction among Americans with the U.S. position in the world. The 2020 survey found that category of satisfaction at 53 percent, up from 32 percent in early 2017. The difference was attributable in large part to a big shift among Republicans. Coming out of the Obama years in 2017, 47 percent of Republicans said they were satisfied with the U.S. position in the world. After three years under Trump, that had risen to 85 percent.

...On Sept. 2, 1987, Trump, at the time a New York real estate developer toying with a run for president, bought a full-page ad in three major newspapers to publish an open letter to the American people outlining his views on foreign and defense policy. It was a view of the world and America’s place in it that he would carry largely unchanged into the White House almost 30 years later.

He did not use the words “America First” but that was the essence of his message. For decades, he argued, “other nations have been taking advantage of the United States.” He said the world “is laughing at America’s politicians” for doing work beneficial to others at the expense of those at home. He said the United States was absorbing the costs of protecting other nations that could and should pay more.

At the time, Japan and Saudi Arabia were among his principal targets. In office, it has become China and the nations of NATO, which together make up the United States’ most important military alliance. But if the targets are different, the philosophy has changed little. America has been played for a sucker, and it’s time to call a halt.

The elements of his America First worldview include a focus on trade, with tariffs as a weapon; a more restrictive immigration policy; pressing others to pay more of the cost of mutual defense; and a reliance on bilateral rather than multilateral negotiations. His style is transactional and highly personal, and while he has been critical of the leaders of democratic countries such as Germany and France, and Britain earlier, he has been reluctant to criticize authoritarian leaders including Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping (the latter at least until recently).

In a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September 2019, Trump said: “If you want freedom, take pride in your country. If you want democracy, hold on to your sovereignty. And if you want peace, love your nation. Wise leaders always put the good of their own people and their own country first. The future does not belong to globalists. The future belongs to patriots. The future belongs to sovereign and independent nations.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a speech to the Heritage Foundation’s President’s Club last October, said the administration was approaching the world realistically. “We’ve recognized that we can’t be all things to everywhere, all the time,” he said. “No nation has the capacity to deliver that. And that means not that you abandon the field but that you calibrate your resources to effectively address the relative risks... I am confident that the next administrations will come into office and they’ll see these issues the same way because they’re right.”

On their face, those words are not particularly discordant. But analysts who have served presidents of both parties come to a different conclusion. They say Trump’s presidency has marked the greatest discontinuity in American foreign policy since World War II.

“President Trump is acting as no administration acted since the 1920s,” said Nicholas Burns, a career Foreign Service officer and former U.S. ambassador to NATO now teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School. “Those presidents were engaged in the world. President Trump isn’t. He’s almost at war with the world.”

Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and U.S. ambassador to NATO during the administration of President Barack Obama, said of Trump, “He doesn’t believe in alliances, open markets, promotion of freedom and human rights — the three pillars of [American] foreign policy. On the essential concept of the United States as the global leader of the international order, Donald Trump has thrown that all out the window.”

“What Donald Trump is doing is badly damaging the belief by people outside the United States that we still understand that that system [of alliances] is in our best interests, as well as the interest of other countries,” said Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, who served in the administration of George W. Bush. “We act like treaties and participation in international organizations is some kind of big favor we are doing everyone else.”

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) said Trump’s benign treatment of authoritarian leaders such as Putin, Xi and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un has produced no obvious positive results or benefits for the United States. “He would argue this is part of his grand strategy to get them to be better neighbors,” Romney said. “The disproof of that is the lack of pudding.”

Romney pointed to Trump’s decision to withdraw from the WHO to argue that going it alone is the wrong strategy. “It’s a very symbolic decision to say the WHO is too influenced by China and we’re going to get out of it so it can be completely dominated by China, instead of saying we’re going to flex our muscle and make sure the WHO gets in line,” he said.

Across the political spectrum of national security analysts, including some who give the president credit in specific areas of foreign policy, there is agreement that the pandemic underscores the damage caused by the president.

Tom Donilon, who was a national security adviser to Obama, said: “By almost every measure, America’s standing and influence in the world has been damaged over the last three-and-a-half years... You see it during a crisis. This is the first global crisis probably since World War II where the United States has not been in the lead. It’s kind of a stunning thing to see a transnational challenge like this without U.S. leadership.”

...What the next four years hold obviously depends considerably on the outcome of the November election, but few who study or practice in the areas of foreign policy and national security see an easy path ahead, whatever the result.

“Over the long term, I still have confidence in our institutions, our entrepreneurial traditions, our universities, our values, our young people and all the rest,” said Hadley, the former national security adviser. “But our margin for error is small. The challenges are great and we’re not doing what we need to do to avoid the doomsday scenario.”

“I think this is the most dangerous moment the United States has faced in decades,” said the former Obama adviser Donilon. “We obviously are in the midst of multiple crises. Economic. Health. A serious societal upheaval. We have an election system that is vulnerable to outside interference... We have the lowest point in our relationships with Russia and China in decades. I think democracy is under the most pressure in the world since the ’30s.”

Burns, a foreign policy adviser to the Biden campaign, said he thinks the former vice president, as president, would “quickly return the United States to a position of leadership” and that other governments would respond positively to that. “But I worry that it will take longer with the publics of these countries,” he added. “The memory of Donald Trump will not fade easily.”

But for those for whom electing Biden solves everything, Daalder offered a cautionary note. “It’s not enough to just change tone,” he said. “People will say it’s great that Joe Biden loves us, but what are we going to do? It will take an extraordinary effort to reengage and rebuild a set of relationships and a set of tools that have been ignored for far too long.”

Few believe a new president can flip a switch and return the situation to that of a previous era. “There is no status quo ante,” said the German Marshall Fund’s Kleine-Brockhoff.

Nor will the choices be easy for allies of the United States, particularly in Europe, even if Biden becomes the next president. “Europeans can dismiss a lot of what the Trump administration tells Europe because it’s Trump telling us,” Niblett said, “because we don’t trust him personally, because as Europeans, we think he’s making it up as he goes along. But if Biden were to come, there’d be no hiding. Europeans would have to make choices”-- starting with their relationship with China.

Whoever is the next president will face what some analysts see as the most daunting national security inheritance of any president in living memory-- and the mere change of administrations might not be enough to reassure other nations, which now fear that a significant portion of the U.S. population embraces Trump’s approach to the world and will continue to do so, even if he is no longer president.

“Now that they’ve seen Trump, they fear a whipsawing back and forth between something they recognize in the historical tradition and something that’s a throwback to neo-isolationism,” said Michèle Flournoy, who served as undersecretary of defense for policy in the Obama administration. “Until they see a second election that validates an engaged United States that is willing to lead in concert with allies and partners, they won’t be assured.”

The prestige of the United States ebbs and flows with events, but the country remains the one to which others still look in times of crisis. Expectations of this country are always higher than for other powers that do not have its long track record of leadership. But the last time this country’s standing was in decline, it was because of fears that the United States would exercise its vast powers excessively and unilaterally. That is not the issue today. Instead, it is a worry that the United States is no longer prepared or willing to use the powers it still has for the good of the world.

How Trump's Own Top Aides Became Convinced Trump "Posed A Danger To The National Security Of The United States" [Also: Trump's Phone Sex With Angela Merkel, Teresa May And Vlad Putin]

New polling across Europe shows that more than 60% of respondents in Germany, France, Spain, Denmark and Portugal said they had lost trust in the United States as a global leader. Negative attitudes of the US were most marked in Denmark (71%) Portugal (70%), France (68%), Germany (65%) and Spain (64%). "Trust in the US is 'broken' as a result of its handling of the health crisis and that support for the transatlantic alliance has been 'hollowed out.' Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, warned in an interview with The Guardian on Friday that the world could no longer take it for granted that America still aspires to be a global leader. The survey suggests that public opinion is already conscious of the shift." Three years of Trump and 200 years of American foreign policy objectives have been flushed down the toilet. If Putin didn't pay Trump for this directly, he was brilliant to figure out what a small investment in his "election" would result in.

I'll file Monday's blockbuster CNN report under the thick and growing file: Worst President In History. Celebrated author and America's most famous investigative journalist, Carl Bernstein, reported that Trump quickly lost the confidence of virtually every serious national security aide he hired-- from his chiefs of staff, secretaries of defense and state right on down the chain. This is how a country turns from a democratic republic to a kakastocracy. Patriots and competent serious advisors cannot last working for Trump... only caca can. One can't read Bernstein's report without coming away with the realization that Trump is entirely unfit to even be in a room where American national security was being discussed. Bernstein wrote that in hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, "Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues, so often outplayed in his conversations with powerful leaders like Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and so abusive to leaders of America's principal allies, that the calls helped convince some senior US officials-- including his former secretaries of state and defense, two national security advisers and his longest-serving chief of staff-- that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States. The calls caused former top Trump deputies-- including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials-- to conclude that the President was often 'delusional,' as two sources put it, in his dealings with foreign leaders. The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest."

Trump, he wrote "regularly bullied and demeaned the leaders of America's principal allies, especially two women: telling Prime Minister Theresa May of the United Kingdom she was weak and lacked courage; and telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel that she was 'stupid.' Trump incessantly boasted to his fellow heads of state, including Saudi Arabia's autocratic royal heir Mohammed bin Salman and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, about his own wealth, genius, 'great' accomplishments as President, and the 'idiocy' of his Oval Office predecessors. In his conversations with both Putin and Erdogan, Trump took special delight in trashing former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and suggested that dealing directly with him-- Trump-- would be far more fruitful than during previous administrations. 'They didn't know BS,' he said of Bush and Obama-- one of several derisive tropes the sources said he favored when discussing his predecessors with the Turkish and Russian leaders. [He] seemed to continually conflate his own personal interests-- especially for purposes of re-election and revenge against perceived critics and political enemies-- with the national interest... One person familiar with almost all the conversations with the leaders of Russia, Turkey, Canada, Australia and western Europe described the calls cumulatively as 'abominations' so grievous to US national security interests that if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President."

The insidious effect of the conversations comes from Trump's tone, his raging outbursts at allies while fawning over authoritarian strongmen, his ignorance of history and lack of preparation as much as it does from the troubling substance, according to the sources. While in office, then- Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats expressed worry to subordinates that Trump's telephone discussions were undermining the coherent conduct of foreign relations and American objectives around the globe, one of CNN's sources said. And in recent weeks, former chief of staff Kelly has mentioned the damaging impact of the President's calls on US national security to several individuals in private.

Two sources compared many of the President's conversations with foreign leaders to Trump's recent press "briefings" on the coronavirus pandemic: free form, fact-deficient stream-of-consciousness ramblings, full of fantasy and off-the-wall pronouncements based on his intuitions, guesswork, the opinions of Fox News TV hosts and social media misinformation.

In addition to Merkel and May, the sources said, Trump regularly bullied and disparaged other leaders of the western alliance during his phone conversations-- including French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison-- in the same hostile and aggressive way he discussed the coronavirus with some of America's governors.

...[H]is most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state. In conversations with both May and Merkel, the President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as "near-sadistic" by one of the sources and confirmed by others. "Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her 'stupid,' and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians ... He's toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with."

The calls with Putin and Erdogan were particularly egregious in terms of Trump almost never being prepared substantively and thus leaving him susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways, according to the sources-- in part because those conversations (as with most heads of state), were almost certainly recorded by the security services and other agencies of their countries.

In his phone exchanges with Putin, the sources reported, the President talked mostly about himself, frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms: touting his "unprecedented" success in building the US economy; asserting in derisive language how much smarter and "stronger" he is than "the imbeciles" and "weaklings" who came before him in the presidency (especially Obama); reveling in his experience running the Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow, and obsequiously courting Putin's admiration and approval. Putin "just outplays" him, said a high-level administration official-- comparing the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. While Putin "destabilizes the West," said this source, the President of the United States "sits there and thinks he can build himself up enough as a businessman and tough guy that Putin will respect him." (At times, the Putin-Trump conversations sounded like "two guys in a steam bath," a source added.)

In numerous calls with Putin that were described to CNN, Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner-- inordinately solicitous of Putin's admiration and seemingly seeking his approval-- while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights; and an arms control agreement, which never got dealt with in a way that advanced shared Russian and American goals that both Putin and Trump professed to favor, CNN's sources said.

Throughout his presidency, Trump has touted the theme of "America First" as his north star in foreign policy, advancing the view that America's allies and adversaries have taken economic advantage of US goodwill in trade. And that America's closest allies need to increase their share of collective defense spending. He frequently justifies his seeming deference to Putin by arguing that Russia is a major world player and that it is in the United States' interest to have a constructive and friendly relationship-- requiring a reset with Moscow through his personal dialogue with Putin.





In separate interviews, two high-level administration officials familiar with most of the Trump-Putin calls said the President naively elevated Russia-- a second-rate totalitarian state with less than 4% of the world's GDP-- and its authoritarian leader almost to parity with the United States and its President by undermining the tougher, more realistic view of Russia expressed by the US Congress, American intelligence agencies and the long-standing post-war policy consensus of the US and its European allies. "He [Trump] gives away the advantage that was hard won in the Cold War," said one of the officials-- in part by "giving Putin and Russia a legitimacy they never had," the official said. "He's given Russia a lifeline-- because there is no doubt that they're a declining power ... He's playing with something he doesn't understand and he's giving them power that they would use [aggressively]."

Both officials cited Trump's decision to pull US troops out of Syria-- a move that benefited Turkey as well as Russia-- as perhaps the most grievous example. "He gave away the store," one of them said.

The frequency of the calls with Erdogan-- in which the Turkish president continually pressed Trump for policy concessions and other favors-- was especially worrisome to McMaster, Bolton and Kelly, the more so because of the ease with which Erdogan bypassed normal National Security Council protocols and procedures to reach the President, said two of the sources.

...The common, overwhelming dynamic that characterizes Trump's conversations with both authoritarian dictators and leaders of the world's greatest democracies is his consistent assertion of himself as the defining subject and subtext of the calls-- almost never the United States and its historic place and leadership in the world, according to sources intimately familiar with the calls.

In numerous calls with the leaders of the UK, France, Germany, Australia and Canada-- America's closest allies of the past 75 years, the whole postwar era-- Trump typically established a grievance almost as a default or leitmotif of the conversation, whatever the supposed agenda, according to those sources.

"Everything was always personalized, with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off-- which meant ripping 'me'-- Trump-- off. He couldn't-- or wouldn't-- see or focus on the larger picture," said one US official.

The source cited a conspicuously demonstrable instance in which Trump resisted asking Angela Merkel (at the UK's urging) to publicly hold Russia accountable for the so-called 'Salisbury' radioactive poisonings of a former Russian spy and his daughter, in which Putin had denied any Russian involvement despite voluminous evidence to the contrary. "It took a lot of effort" to get Trump to bring up the subject, said one source. Instead of addressing Russia's responsibility for the poisonings and holding it to international account, Trump made the focus of the call-- in personally demeaning terms-- Germany's and Merkel's supposedly deadbeat approach to allied burden-sharing. Eventually, said the sources, as urged by his NSC staff, Trump at last addressed the matter of the poisonings, almost grudgingly.

"With almost every problem, all it takes [in his phone calls] is someone asking him to do something as President on behalf of the United States and he doesn't see it that way; he goes to being ripped off; he's not interested in cooperative issues or working on them together; instead he's deflecting things or pushing real issues off into a corner," said a US official.

"There was no sense of 'Team America' in the conversations," or of the United States as an historic force with certain democratic principles and leadership of the free world, said the official. "The opposite. It was like the United States had disappeared. It was always 'Just me'."

Not a mention of any of the many Trump-Netanyahu discussions. Who's covering that up... and why?