Category Archives: Analysis

Trump’s personal arm-twister, Michael D. Cohen, sidelined under glare of Russia inquiry

The New York Times reports: Just over a decade ago, Donald J. Trump was locked in conflict with a group of apartment owners who had taken control of the condominium board at his new glass tower across from the United Nations. Faced with accusations of financial impropriety and an affront to his authority, Mr. Trump turned to Michael D. Cohen, a former personal injury lawyer who helped run a taxi fleet.

Mr. Cohen did not seem to have extensive expertise in the arcana of New York City condo rules. But he had something Mr. Trump seemed to value more: devotion to the Trump brand. He had already purchased a number of Trump properties and had persuaded his parents, in-laws and a business partner to buy apartments in Mr. Trump’s flashy new development, Trump World Tower.

Plus, he had read Mr. Trump’s book “The Art of the Deal.” Twice.

With Mr. Cohen’s help, Mr. Trump regained control of the board, orchestrating a coup that culminated in a standoff between his security detail and private guards hired by the disgruntled owners, according to people who were there. Details of the dispute’s resolution are secret because of a confidentiality agreement, but Mr. Cohen said that his task was “masterfully accomplished.”

He went on to serve as a key confidant for Mr. Trump, with an office near the boss at Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue. Officially, his title was special counsel, but he appears to have served more as a kind of personal arm-twister. If anyone crossed Mr. Trump or stood in his way, Mr. Cohen, who was known to sometimes carry a licensed pistol in an ankle holster, would cajole, bully or threaten a lawsuit, according to a half-dozen people who dealt with him over the years.

“If somebody does something Mr. Trump doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to Mr. Trump’s benefit,” Mr. Cohen once said during an interview with ABC News. “If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck, and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.” [Continue reading…]

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Iraq: The battle to come

Joost Hiltermann writes: As an eight-month battle to retake Mosul from ISIS is coming to an end in the labyrinthine alleyways of the Old City, a parallel battle to defeat its fighters in the Syrian town of Raqqa is gathering force. But further battles await: downstream along the Euphrates in Deir al-Zour, in the vast desert that spans the Iraq–Syria border, and in a large chunk of territory west of the Iraqi city of Kirkuk. To members of the US-led coalition and to Western audiences, this has been a necessary military campaign, directed at a jihadist group whose brutal methods and ambition to carry out attacks in western capitals pose an intolerable threat.

To local people, the picture is decidedly different. ISIS’s military defeat, which Western officials believe will come sometime later this year or early next, will hardly put an end to the conflicts that gave rise to the group. For much of the battle against ISIS has taken place in a region that has been fought over ever since oil was found in Kirkuk in the 1930s. The deeper conflicts here—between Arabs and Kurds, between Shia and Sunni, between neighboring powers such as Iran and Turkey, and among the Kurds themselves—will only escalate as the victors, fortified by weapons supplies and military training provided by foreign governments, engage in a mad scramble for the spoils.

When ISIS conquered Iraq’s predominantly Sunni Arab areas three years ago, it faced off with Kurdish forces along a frontline that ran through the middle of what one might call the borderlands between Arab Iraq, with Baghdad as its capital, and Kurdish Iraq, which is governed from Erbil in the north. Kurdish leaders claim that significant parts of these so-called disputed territories are “Kurdistani,” by which they mean that even if the local population is not majority-Kurdish, it nevertheless should be incorporated into the Kurdish region—and thus into a desired future Kurdish state. Many local Arabs, on the other hand, insist that these areas are inalienably Iraqi and must remain under Baghdad’s authority. [Continue reading…]

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Good news, despite what you’ve heard

Nicholas Kristof writes: Just since 1990, more than 100 million children’s lives have been saved through vaccinations and improved nutrition and medical care. They’re no longer dying of malaria, diarrhea or unpleasant causes like having one’s intestines blocked by wriggling worms. (This is a good news column, but I didn’t say it wouldn’t be a bit gross.)

“There are deworming campaigns now, so it’s much rarer that we go into surgery for obstruction and see a big mass of worms,” explained Agatha Neufville, the nursing director at the Ganta United Methodist Hospital.

Nine out of 10 Americans say in polls that global poverty has been staying the same or worsening. So let’s correct the record.

There has been a stunning decline in extreme poverty, defined as less than about $2 per person per day, adjusted for inflation. For most of history, probably more than 90 percent of the world population lived in extreme poverty, plunging to fewer than 10 percent today.

Every day, another 250,000 people graduate from extreme poverty, according to World Bank figures. About 300,000 get electricity for the first time. Some 285,000 get their first access to clean drinking water. When I was a boy, a majority of adults had always been illiterate, but now more than 85 percent can read.

Family planning leads parents to have fewer babies and invest more in each. The number of global war deaths is far below what it was in the 1950s through the 1990s, let alone the murderous 1930s and ’40s. [Continue reading…]

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French shift on Syria could open doors in Russia

Igor Delanoe writes: In a recent interview with the European press, newly elected French President Emmanuel Macron outlined some of the key principles that shape his foreign policy regarding Europe, the Middle East and Russia. Macron, who assumed office May 14, is ready to tackle security issues stemming from Middle East instability. His approach may pave the way for a greater convergence between Paris and Moscow.

The June 21 interview at Elysee Palace came three days after the victory of his centrist/liberal political movement, La Republique en Marche, in legislative elections.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian met June 20 with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow. They discussed Syria and Ukraine in an atmosphere depicted as constructive by the French press, which emphasized that the objective of Le Drian’s visit was to alleviate tensions with Moscow on key international issues. The trip was a follow-up to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Versailles less than a month earlier. [Continue reading…]

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Most Americans like science — and are willing to pay for it

Bethany Brookshire writes: Americans don’t hate science. Quite the contrary. In fact, 79 percent of Americans think science has made their lives easier, a 2014 Pew Research Center survey found. More than 60 percent of people also believe that government funding for science is essential to its success.

But should the United States spend more money on scientific research than it already does? A layperson’s answer to that question depends on how much that person thinks the government already spends on science, a new study shows. When people find out just how much — or rather, how little — of the federal budget goes to science, support for more funding suddenly jumps. [Continue reading…]

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Trump mistakes cruelty for strength

Maureen Dowd writes: So, with this latest toad jumping from our president’s mouth, is Donald Trump acting like a sexist pig or simply a pig?

I proffer, a pig.

I have no doubt that he would attack a man’s appearance in the same breathtakingly below-the-belt way if he felt humiliated by that man and had the ammunition.

In his vile tweet about Mika Brzezinski, he called her crazy. He often tweets that women journalists — including me — are crazy. Yet in that same tweet about Mika, he called Joe Scarborough “psycho.” And he told the Russians in May that James Comey was “a nut job.”

Some, including Scarborough, think Trump goes after women harder. Certainly, it resonates more with women because of Trump’s history of sexist remarks, his taped boasting about assaulting women and his habit of rating women’s looks on a 1-to-10 scale. (He did once tell me, though, that he considered women “tougher” and that he related to them better.)

There is also the historical context: It is a more sensitive matter for women because for centuries, they relied on their looks for economic security, and they continue to be judged more on physical traits and clothing choices.

But as some women anchoring cable shows call for the women in the Trump administration to rise up in protest, I say: Let’s not narrow it to sexism.

It’s even more troubling than that. It’s cruelty on a Grand Guignol scale, both in Trump’s heartless tweets and in his mindless salesmanship of the Republicans’ heartless budget. When Trump called the House health care bill mean, he knows whereof he speaks. He’s the King of Mean. Pathetically, Trump mistakes cruelty for strength. [Continue reading…]

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Trump can’t take the heat

An editorial in the New York Times says: Maybe we should all take a moment to feel a little sorry for Donald Trump, who reacted to criticism on Thursday by tweeting a stream of coarse insults at the television journalist Mika Brzezinski.

After all, he so clearly lacks the toughness of George Washington, who once privately observed that his critics’ “arrows … never can reach the most vulnerable part of me.” He lacks the confidence of Dwight Eisenhower, who said, when asked if he thought his press coverage was fair, “Well, when you come down to it, I don’t see what a reporter could do much to a president, do you?”

And — are we really about to write this sentence? — Mr. Trump lacks the grace Richard Nixon showed, at least in public. At the height of Watergate in late 1973, Mr. Nixon blurted at a news conference, “I have never heard or seen such outrageous, vicious, distorted reporting in 27 years of public life.” Yet he added, “I am not blaming anybody for that. Perhaps what happened is that what we did brought it about.”

Mr. Trump may be a more tender soul, or less resilient. In any case, he can’t seem to take the heat.

Probably no one in the world draws as much scrutiny and criticism — even mockery — as an American president, and each president understandably chafes. But for Mr. Trump, every barb seems to hit home, and he vengefully attacks his tormentors in full view of the world. [Continue reading…]

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Trump says states are ‘trying to hide’ things from his voter fraud commission. Here’s what they actually say

Philip Bump and Christopher Ingraham write: More than two dozen states have refused to fully comply with a sweeping and unprecedented White House request to turn over voter registration data, including sensitive information like partial Social Security numbers, party affiliation and military status.

Overall, the states that have said they will not be complying at all with the Kobach commission’s request represent over 30 percent of the nation’s population. That could complicate any efforts to build a truly national voter file, although it remains unclear what the commission’s ultimate goal is in collecting the data.

Those states found themselves the targets of the President Trump’s ire on Twitter on Saturday morning: “Numerous states are refusing to give information to the very distinguished VOTER FRAUD PANEL. What are they trying to hide?”

As it turns out, the bipartisan group of state officials withholding information from the commission have been very forthcoming about their reasons for not complying. Here’s what a number of them have said.

“I will not provide sensitive voter information to a commission that has already inaccurately passed judgment that millions of Californians voted illegally,” said California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, a Democrat.

“California’s participation would only serve to legitimize the false and already debunked claims of massive voter fraud made by the President, the Vice President, and Mr. Kobach,” he added. “[Kobach’s] role as vice chair is proof that the ultimate goal of the commission is to enact policies that will result in the disenfranchisement of American citizens.” [Continue reading…]

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‘Morning Joe’ row is fresh sign of TV’s iron grip on Trump

Jim Rutenberg writes: There are a lot of insights to be drawn from the latest media maelstrom involving President Trump: about his sensitivity to criticism, his impulsivity, the way he talks about women and the ease with which he can still hurl the basest of insults.

But the episode is also a striking example of how a presidency born of television lives there still, no matter what else might be going on In Real Life (IRL, as the internet calls it).

It’s a cable news-Twitter presidency. So is it any wonder that one of the great, early standoffs of the new administration is not between the president and Congress or the president and a foreign leader, but between the president and the hosts of a morning news show?

As one of those hosts, Joe Scarborough of MSNBC, told me on Friday, “He should be a lot more worried about NATO and building a relationship with Angela Merkel than he is with cable news hosts.” [Continue reading…]

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A plot, with apparent Russian backing, to use Clinton emails in the Trump campaign

Matt Tait, a former information security specialist for GCHQ and currently a security consultant who tweets as @pwnallthethings, was a source for the Wall Street Journal’s reporting on Peter Smith, his ties to the Trump campaign and his apparent communications with Russian intelligence. Tait writes: When he first contacted me, I did not know who Smith was, but his legitimate connections within the Republican party were apparent. My motive for initially speaking to him was that I wondered if the campaign was trying to urgently establish whether the claims that Russia had hacked the DNC was merely “spin” from the Clinton campaign, or instead something they would need to address before Trump went too far down the road of denying it. My guess was that maybe they wanted to contact someone who could provide them with impartial advice to understand whether the claims were real or just rhetoric.

Although it wasn’t initially clear to me how independent Smith’s operation was from Flynn or the Trump campaign, it was immediately apparent that Smith was both well connected within the top echelons of the campaign and he seemed to know both Lt. Gen. Flynn and his son well. Smith routinely talked about the goings on at the top of the Trump team, offering deep insights into the bizarre world at the top of the Trump campaign. Smith told of Flynn’s deep dislike of DNI Clapper, whom Flynn blamed for his dismissal by President Obama. Smith told of Flynn’s moves to position himself to become CIA Director under Trump, but also that Flynn had been persuaded that the Senate confirmation process would be prohibitively difficult. He would instead therefore become National Security Advisor should Trump win the election, Smith said. He also told of a deep sense of angst even among Trump loyalists in the campaign, saying “Trump often just repeats whatever he’s heard from the last person who spoke to him,” and expressing the view that this was especially dangerous when Trump was away.

Over the course of a few phone calls, initially with Smith and later with Smith and one of his associates—a man named John Szobocsan—I was asked about my observations on technical details buried in the State Department’s release of Secretary Clinton’s emails (such as noting a hack attempt in 2011, or how Clinton’s emails might have been intercepted by Russia due to lack of encryption). I was also asked about aspects of the DNC hack, such as why I thought the “Guccifer 2” persona really was in all likelihood operated by the Russian government, and how it wasn’t necessary to rely on CrowdStrike’s attribution as blind faith; noting that I had come to the same conclusion independently based on entirely public evidence, having been initially doubtful of CrowdStrike’s conclusions.

Towards the end of one of our conversations, Smith made his pitch. He said that his team had been contacted by someone on the “dark web”; that this person had the emails from Hillary Clinton’s private email server (which she had subsequently deleted), and that Smith wanted to establish if the emails were genuine. If so, he wanted to ensure that they became public prior to the election. What he wanted from me was to determine if the emails were genuine or not.

It is no overstatement to say that my conversations with Smith shocked me. Given the amount of media attention given at the time to the likely involvement of the Russian government in the DNC hack, it seemed mind-boggling for the Trump campaign—or for this offshoot of it—to be actively seeking those emails. To me this felt really wrong.

In my conversations with Smith and his colleague, I tried to stress this point: if this dark web contact is a front for the Russian government, you really don’t want to play this game. But they were not discouraged. They appeared to be convinced of the need to obtain Clinton’s private emails and make them public, and they had a reckless lack of interest in whether the emails came from a Russian cut-out. Indeed, they made it quite clear to me that it made no difference to them who hacked the emails or why they did so, only that the emails be found and made public before the election.

As I mentioned above, Smith and his associates’ knowledge of the inner workings of the campaign were insightful beyond what could be obtained by merely attending Republican events or watching large amounts of news coverage. But one thing I could not place, at least initially, was whether Smith was working on behalf of the campaign, or whether he was acting independently to help the campaign in his personal capacity.

Then, a few weeks into my interactions with Smith, he sent me a document, ostensibly a cover page for a dossier of opposition research to be compiled by Smith’s group, and which purported to clear up who was involved. The document was entitled “A Demonstrative Pedagogical Summary to be Developed and Released Prior to November 8, 2016,” and dated September 7. It detailed a company Smith and his colleagues had set up as a vehicle to conduct the research: “KLS Research”, set up as a Delaware LLC “to avoid campaign reporting,” and listing four groups who were involved in one way or another.

The first group, entitled “Trump Campaign (in coordination to the extent permitted as an independent expenditure)” listed a number of senior campaign officials: Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sam Clovis, Lt. Gen. Flynn and Lisa Nelson.

The largest group named a number of “independent groups / organizations / individuals / resources to be deployed.” My name appears on this list. At the time, I didn’t recognize most of the others; however, several made headlines in the weeks immediately prior to the election.

My perception then was that the inclusion of Trump campaign officials on this document was not merely a name-dropping exercise. This document was about establishing a company to conduct opposition research on behalf of the campaign, but operating at a distance so as to avoid campaign reporting. Indeed, the document says as much in black and white.

The combination of Smith’s deep knowledge of the inner workings of the campaign, this document naming him in the “Trump campaign” group, and the multiple references to needing to avoid campaign reporting suggested to me that the group was formed with the blessing of the Trump campaign. [Continue reading…]

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What really happened between Donald Trump, the hosts of Morning Joe, and the National Enquirer

New York magazine reports: As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump used his close alliance with the National Enquirer to attack his enemies. Now that he’s President, he’s continuing to benefit from the tabloid’s support.

This morning in a Washington Post op-ed, Morning Joe co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski disclosed that White House officials offered to spike an Enquirer story about their romance if the pair apologized to Trump for the show’s critical coverage. In recent months, Scarborough and Brzezinski have questioned Trump’s mental state and fitness for office. They elaborated on the op-ed on MSNBC this morning. Morning Joe regular Donny Deutsch said it was “blackmail” for Trump to use a hit-piece in the Enquirer to extract an apology from media critics. Trump then tweeted a quasi-confirmation of the behind-the-scenes conversations, saying that Scarborough called to enlist his help to kill the story. Scarborough called Trump’s version a “lie,” tweeting that he never spoke to the president.

According to three sources familiar with the private conversations, what happened was this: After the inauguration, Morning Joe’s coverage of Trump turned sharply negative. “This presidency is fake and failed,” Brzezinski said on March 6, for example. Around this time, Scarborough and Brzezinski found out the Enquirer was preparing a story about their affair. While Scarborough and Brzezinski’s relationship had been gossiped about in media circles for some time, it was not yet public, and the tabloid was going to report that they had left their spouses to be together. [Continue reading…]

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Russia’s geopolitical PR campaign finds a perfect opening in North Africa

By Cristian Nitoiu, Aston University

Not since the end of the Cold War has Russia carried so much weight. Deeply involved in the conflict in eastern Ukraine, doggedly safeguarding Bashar al-Assad’s embattled regime in Syria, and alleged to have meddled in the US presidential elections, the Kremlin is a force for all the world to reckon with. And now it has a new playing field, one of the various areas where the West has failed to shepherd a state from dictatorship to democracy: Libya.

While it has started to take an explicit interest in negotiations between the country’s two warring government’s, Russia’s moves in Libya have been mainly symbolic. In 2016, its only aircraft carrier, Admiral Kuznetzov, stopped there on its way back from Syria. In January 2017, eastern Libyan military commander Khalifa Haftar was given a tour of the carrier in the Mediterranean, with talk of Russian support for his regime (which doesn’t enjoy UN backing); come the summer, Moscow tested its new Kalibr and X-35 missiles off the Libyan coast.

On the face of it, this looks like a clear attempt to exploit strategic gaps left by the US and the EU. The West has been unwilling and unable to push forward a solution that would bring together Libya’s rival factions, a failure very much in line with an old Russian narrative that deplores Western intervention in sovereign countries’ affairs.

As Russia sees it, the main lesson of Libya’s descent into chaos since 2011 is that that the West greatly overestimated its grasp of the complexities of North African politics. There’s an obvious parallel with Ukraine, where Moscow’s primary goal since the 2014 “Maidan revolution” has been to show that where the West tries to impose liberalism upon sovereign countries, it is doomed to fail.

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Sending information without transmitting a signal

Joshua Roebke writes: We connect to each other through particles. Calls and texts ride flecks of light, Web sites and photographs load on electrons. All communication is, essentially, physical. Information is recorded and broadcast on actual objects, even those we cannot see.

Physicists also connect to the world when they communicate with it. They dispatch glints of light toward particles or atoms, and wait for this light to report back. The light interacts with the bits of matter, and how this interaction changes the light reveals a property or two of the bits—although this interaction often changes the bits, too. The term of art for such a candid affair is a measurement.

Particles even connect to each other using other particles. The force of electromagnetism between two electrons is conveyed by particles of light, and quarks huddle inside a proton because they exchange gluons. Physics is, essentially, the study of interactions.

Information is always conveyed through interactions, whether between particles or ourselves. We are compositions of particles who communicate with each other, and we learn about our surroundings by interacting with them. The better we understand such interactions, the better we understand the world and ourselves.

Physicists already know that interactions are local. As with city politics, the influence of particles is confined to their immediate precincts. Yet interactions remain difficult to describe. Physicists have to treat particles as individuals and add complex terms to their solitary existence to model their intimacies with other particles. The resulting equations are usually impossible to solve. So physicists have to approximate even for single particles, which can interact with themselves as a boat rolls in its own wake. Although physicists are meticulous, it is a wonder they ever succeed. Still, their contentions are the most accurate theories we have.

Quantum mechanics is the consummate theory of particles, so it naturally describes measurements and interactions. During the past few decades, as computers have nudged the quantum, the theory has been reframed to encompass information, too. What quantum mechanics implies for measurements and interactions is notoriously bizarre. Its implications for information are stranger still.

One of the strangest of these implications refutes the material basis of communication as well as common sense. Some physicists believe that we may be able to communicate without transmitting particles. In 2013 an amateur physicist named Hatim Salih even devised a protocol, alongside professionals, in which information is obtained from a place where particles never travel. Information can be disembodied. Communication may not be so physical after all.[Continue reading…]

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Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough: Donald Trump is ‘not mentally equipped to continue watching our show’

Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough write: President Trump launched personal attacks against us Thursday, but our concerns about his unmoored behavior go far beyond the personal. America’s leaders and allies are asking themselves yet again whether this man is fit to be president. We have our doubts, but we are both certain that the man is not mentally equipped to continue watching our show, “Morning Joe.”

The president’s unhealthy obsession with our show has been in the public record for months, and we are seldom surprised by his posting nasty tweets about us. During the campaign, the Republican nominee called Mika “neurotic” and promised to attack us personally after the campaign ended. This year, top White House staff members warned that the National Enquirer was planning to publish a negative article about us unless we begged the president to have the story spiked. We ignored their desperate pleas.

The president’s unhealthy obsession with “Morning Joe” does not serve the best interests of either his mental state or the country he runs. Despite his constant claims that he no longer watches the show, the president’s closest advisers tell us otherwise. That is unfortunate. We believe it would be better for America and the rest of the world if he would keep his 60-inch-plus flat-screen TV tuned to “Fox & Friends.” [Continue reading…]

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How Rex Tillerson is wrecking the State Department

Max Bergmann writes: The deconstruction of the State Department is well underway.

I recently returned to Foggy Bottom for the first time since January 20 to attend the departure of a former colleague and career midlevel official—something that had sadly become routine. In my six years at State as a political appointee, under the Obama administration, I had gone to countless of these events. They usually followed a similar pattern: slightly awkward, but endearing formalities, a sense of melancholy at the loss of a valued teammate. But, in the end, a rather jovial celebration of a colleague’s work. These events usually petered out quickly, since there is work to do. At the State Department, the unspoken mantra is: The mission goes on, and no one is irreplaceable. But this event did not follow that pattern. It felt more like a funeral, not for the departing colleague, but for the dying organization they were leaving behind.

As I made the rounds and spoke with usually buttoned-up career officials, some who I knew well, some who I didn’t, from a cross section of offices covering various regions and functions, no one held back. To a person, I heard that the State Department was in “chaos,” “a disaster,” “terrible,” the leadership “totally incompetent.” This reflected what I had been hearing the past few months from friends still inside the department, but hearing it in rapid fire made my stomach churn. As I walked through the halls once stalked by diplomatic giants like Dean Acheson and James Baker, the deconstruction was literally visible. Furniture from now-closed offices crowded the hallways. Dropping in on one of my old offices, I expected to see a former colleague—a career senior foreign service officer—but was stunned to find out she had been abruptly forced into retirement and had departed the previous week. This office, once bustling, had just one person present, keeping on the lights.

This is how diplomacy dies. Not with a bang, but with a whimper. With empty offices on a midweek afternoon.

When Rex Tillerson was announced as secretary of state, there was a general feeling of excitement and relief in the department. After eight years of high-profile, jet-setting secretaries, the building was genuinely looking forward to having someone experienced in corporate management. Like all large, sprawling organizations, the State Department’s structure is in perpetual need of an organizational rethink. That was what was hoped for, but that is not what is happening. Tillerson is not reorganizing, he’s downsizing. [Continue reading…]

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Trump no longer seems able to hide his raw misogyny. Good

Michelle Goldberg writes: The President of the United States began this morning as he often does, tweeting juvenile insults at the news media. But even by Donald Trump standards, today’s jabs at TV hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were unusually gross. Taken together, they read: “I heard poorly rated @Morning_Joe speaks badly of me (don’t watch anymore). Then how come low I.Q. Crazy Mika, along with Psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago 3 nights in a row around New Year’s Eve, and insisted on joining me. She was bleeding badly from a face-lift. I said no!”

There’s a lot you can say about these tweets; among other things, it’s striking that Trump thinks that when journalists seek access to him, it means they like him. But I was most struck by Trump’s raw misogyny. Obviously, that’s not because Trumpian misogyny is anything new, but because, from the time he was inaugurated until this week, he’s mostly been holding it in.

Trump does not get much credit for being disciplined, but for the last five months, he’s mostly checked his tendencies to leeringly appraise women’s looks, at least in public. (Vanity Fair did report in April that during a visit by the Japanese Prime Minister, “the president told an acquaintance that he was obsessed with the translator’s breasts.”) So far, there’s been no reported pussy-grabbing in the Oval Office, no stumbling in women’s changing rooms or fantasizing aloud about female subordinates on their knees. Instead Trump, like other Republicans before him, has sublimated his misogyny into policies: expanding the global gag rule, sabotaging federal family planning programs, eroding enforcement of the law against gender discrimination in education. [Continue reading…]

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‘America first’ is becoming America alone

Brian Klaas writes: Developing countries use global powers as blueprints to build their societies. Citizens pressure their governments to follow what works. At the end of the Cold War, most countries saw one viable blueprint: liberal democracy. Nearly two decades later, China’s version of authoritarian capitalism and Russia’s aggressive nationalism are countermodels. The more that the world looks down on the United States, the more alluring those alternatives become.

And yet, Trump has proven ruthlessly efficient at destroying the standing of the U.S. model. His personal behavior is not the only problem. Partisan tribalism, political polarization and endless gridlock are stains that will not be easily wiped away. The 2016 election and its aftermath was a flashing neon sign to the world, one stating that U.S. democracy is badly broken. Whoever is to blame, the bottom line is clear: Fewer and fewer countries want to emulate the United States.

That shift is happening at the worst possible time. Trump’s foreign policy not only is bad for America’s reputation, but it also actively undercuts the prospects of democracy around the world. He has articulated a vision of a selfish and shortsighted “America first” foreign policy, prompting smaller countries to seek out new sponsors. (Beijing and Moscow are waiting with open arms.) Simultaneously, Trump unapologetically acts as a cheerleader for despots — praising Putin, congratulating President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for dismantling Turkish democracy and endorsing President Rodrigo Duterte’s death squads in the Philippines. And they’ve received the message loud and clear. It’s a free pass from Washington that allows would-be strongmen to indulge their darkest impulses without fear of consequences.

Trump always promised he’d be a president who would get things done quickly. He’s making good on that promise in one awful way: Trump has destroyed America’s standing in the world after just five months on the job. [Continue reading…]

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What happens when the whole world becomes selfish

David Ignatius writes: When the leader of the global system proclaims that he won’t be bound by foreign restraints, the spirit becomes infectious. Call the global zeitgeist what you will: The new realism. Eyes on the prize. Winning isn’t the most important thing, it’s the only thing.

Middle East leaders have been notably more aggressive in asserting their own versions of national interest. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates defied pleas from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to stop escalating their blockade against Qatar for allegedly supporting extremism. Their argument was simple self-interest: If Qatar wants to ally with the Gulf Arabs, then it must accept our rules. Otherwise, Qatar is out.

For the leaders of Iraqi Kurdistan, the issue has been whether to wait on their dream of independence. They decided to go ahead with their referendum, despite worries among top U.S. officials that it could upset American efforts to hold Iraq together and thereby destabilize the region. The implicit Kurdish answer: That’s not our problem. We need to do what’s right for our people.

Trump has at least been consistent. His aides cite a benchmark speech he made April 27, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, in which he offered an early systematic “America first” pitch. He argued that the country had been blundering around the world with half-baked, do-gooder schemes “since the end of the Cold War and the breakup of the Soviet Union.”

Trump explained: “It all began with a dangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy. We tore up what institutions they had and then were surprised at what we unleashed.”

What’s interesting is that this same basic critique has been made, almost word for word, by Russian President Vladimir Putin. That’s not a conspiracy-minded argument that Trump is Putin’s man, but simply an observation that our president embraces the same raw cynicism about values-based foreign policy as does the leader of Russia. [Continue reading…]

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