Thread: Trump made a mess, but it wasn't an accident — and he won't clean it up

Trump made a mess, but it wasn't an accident — and he won't clean it up

by Jonathan Allen / Jul.17.2018 / 6:50 AM ET

AMSTERDAM — President Donald Trump blew it for the U.S. and its allies, but there’s little chance he’ll clean up the mess he made.

Sure, he’s taking criticism, even from some loyalists, for cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin, choosing not to hold Putin accountable for Russia’s attacks in its backyard and in the West, and generally telling NATO countries to go defend themselves.

No other U.S. president has returned home from a foreign trip having so aggressively departed from the advice of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, and even his own advisers.

But don’t expect Trump to backtrack just because he’s being told, loudly, that he’s acting not just outside American interests but against them.

In his own mind, he didn’t make a mistake. Trump, who called the EU a “foe” just before he met with Putin in Helsinki Monday, is taking the U.S. in a different — explicitly pro-Moscow, anti-European Union — direction.

Expect to hear him brag about how he’s upsetting the world order in the name of nuclear harmony with Russia and superpower hegemony on the campaign trail in coming weeks.

That’s a terrifying thought for most American foreign policy experts, who see Russia as a threat in part because Trump keeps enhancing the perception of Putin’s power.

Trump could have swept into Brussels and fortified the U.S. relationship with NATO. Instead, he punched American allies in the face.

He could have, unambiguously, propped up British Prime Minister Theresa May with a full-throated endorsement of the “soft” Brexit plan that is roiling her Conservative party. But he hammered her, too, before relenting upon his departure.

And he could have told Russian President Vladimir Putin that the U.S. won’t do business with him until Russia owns up to its role in the 2016 American election, stops undermining Western democracies and their cybersecurity, and retrenches from his incursions in Ukraine.

He could have shamed Putin on the world stage and put Moscow on its heels.

Instead, Trump drew lines of moral and power equivalency between America and Russia, his own country’s chief historical geopolitical adversary. He did it on foreign soil, standing next to Russian President Vladimir Putin. And he enhanced his defense of Moscow by blasting fellow Americans over the investigations into Russian tampering.

From his perspective, the trip was a win.

It served his own interests, from discrediting the Russia probe to fracturing the liberal democratic alliance that has kept peace in Europe since World War II in service of promoting his brand of conservative nationalism abroad.

But his actions have come at the expense of American interests, according to Democrats and many Republicans.

“There is no question that Russia interfered in our election and continues attempts to undermine democracy here and around the world,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said in a statement. “The president must appreciate that Russia is not our ally. There is no moral equivalence between the United States and Russia, which remains hostile to our most basic values and ideals.”

Put another way, the Republican speaker argued that the Republican president doesn’t understand what he’s doing.

That’s a forgiving interpretation of what the president, who sided with Putin over his own national intelligence director, did to the credibility of his country and its intelligence community.

The less charitable version is that Trump, who fancies himself a disruptor, knew exactly what he was doing — that for one reason or another, be it a desire to destroy the liberal democratic model of the West, a reward for Putin’s help in making him president or pure admiration for the Russian strongman and his nation, Trump wanted to empower Moscow.

Whatever his motivation, Trump touched off a cavalcade of criticism from lawmakers and Republican foreign policy experts.

But there’s no indication that Republicans will take any serious action to rein in a president of their own party.

We’ve been here before.

Trump does something so indefensible that his loyal Republican allies criticize him publicly to distance themselves from the action, and the portion of Americans who don’t consider themselves part of Trump’s base wonder when, if ever, it will permanently cost him GOP support.

Many Republicans who have brooked his behavior in the past leapt to denounce his conduct at his summit-closing press conference with Putin, recognizing that it jeopardizes American security by encouraging Moscow to continue its campaign of information warfare and cyberattacks on the U.S.

Still, much of the outrage has come from longtime Trump critics in the GOP — including Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee — and there has been little in the way of an organized push to circumscribe Trump.

This cycle has played out repeatedly in the past, most notably when video of Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women surfaced a month before the 2016 election and when Trump said “both sides” were at fault when a rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly last year.

When many of Trump’s Republican allies repudiated him over the “Access Hollywood” tape, his foreign supporters with ties to Moscow — namely, Julian Assange’s Wikileaks — began releasing stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta, to help him out of a hole.

While some Republicans threatened to abandon Trump over the tape, most of them quickly came back into the fold in service of electing their nominee.

GOP discomfort over the Charlottesville remarks died out quickly, overtaken by approval of Trump’s push to confirm conservative judges, slice up Obamacare and cut taxes.

Could this controversy play out differently? Maybe at the margins in the short term — but not in any sustained way that would truly counter Trump’s expressed view that Russian interests and American interests are more aligned than members of Congress and the foreign policy establishment believe.

Dan Coats and Jon Huntsman, his national intelligence director and Russia ambassador, respectively, could resign. They were both publicly humiliated by the Donald-and-Vlad show in Helsinki — so much so that one of Huntsman’s daughters, Fox News host Abby Huntsman, criticized Trump for throwing members of his own administration “under the bus.”

Congress could, as it has before, could defy Trump and enact a new round of Russia sanctions.

But these aren’t really deterrents for Trump, who has exhibited no shame in the face of rhetorical and legislative rebukes from Republican lawmakers.

He simply has a different view of American interests than they say they do, and, because they share voters, he can make trouble for them at home if they truly stand in his way.

So the most likely outcome by far is that they’ll say they’re outraged — and maybe at the edges, they’ll counter his Russia policy — but there’s no indication that they will take him to task for elevating Russia and giving Moscow license to continue tampering with American elections.

The summit was a victory for Putin, Corker said.

“I think he gained a tremendous amount. I mean here has been ostracized on the world stage. You know, as many difficulties as Europe is having right now, one thing they've stayed together on is continuing to push back on the rules, the international norms that he broke in Eastern Europe, Ukraine and Crimea,” he said. “I would guess he's having caviar right now.”

Trump seems content with that. And there’s little reason to think anyone will force him to change course.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/whi...-won-t-n891941

So who is Jonathan Allen? Is it this Johnathan Allen? Are the Brits "meddling" in our domestic affairs? Are they pushing a propaganda campaign against our President and a new relationship with Russia?!! When is Christopher Steele going to be indicted for serving as an unregistered agent representing a foreign power meddling in our Presidential election? I mean we can actually take him to trial because we have an extradition treaty with the UK, right? This whole thing started with him, didn't it? Yeah, I think it did.

Deputy Permanent Representative, UK Mission to the UN, New York

Jonathan Allen

Jonathan Allen was appointed UK Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York in August 2017. He was the Director, National Security at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office from 2015 until 2017.

Jonathan joined the FCO in 1997 and began his career in Europe Directorate working on EU issues. He was subsequently posted to Cyprus and Brussels, where he was government spokesman during the UK Presidency in 2005.

In 2006, Jonathan was seconded to the Home Office as Assistant Director in the Home Office’s International Directorate. In 2007 he moved to the Office for Security and Counter-terrorism (OSCT), where he established and led the Research Information and Communications Unit (RICU), a cross-departmental strategic communications body.

Jonathan returned to the FCO as Deputy Africa Director before becoming Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Bulgaria from 2012 to 2015. On return from Bulgaria Jonathan took up the post of Director, National Security at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Jonathan covered the position of Acting Director General, Defence and Intelligence from November 2016 to April 2017.

https://www.gov.uk/government/people/jonathan-allen

But Jonathan is right, Trump isn't going to change. He's committed to a new and improved relationship with Russia and he'll see that through. Trump won't jeopardize that goal with petty meddling accusations we can't prove and in fact could be wrong about because the agencies involved are dripping in bias and their own "shadow" agendas. The goal is too important.

Originally Posted by Judy

But Jonathan is right, Trump isn't going to change. He's committed to a new and improved relationship with Russia and he'll see that through. Trump won't jeopardize that goal with petty meddling accusations we can't prove and in fact could be wrong about because the agencies involved are dripping in bias and their own "shadow" agendas. The goal is too important.

Even though it has been done by Russia and others in the past, there is nothing petty about meddling in our election process!

What Russia has been accused of is petty. Computer hacking is something else. But what they laid out in that indictment doesn't prove Russia had anything to do with it.