Trump Rot

From the end of last week up to today, enough to see the rot. 

 Ken Paxton faces Republican blame as he trails in Texas Senate race

“Trump ought to be encouraging turnout in Texas instead of laying blame on an outgoing senator,” said Chad Wilbanks, a Texas-based lobbyist and former executive director of the state’s Republican Party.

“It’s the name calling, it’s the bashing,” he continued, saying it’s coming from populist Republicans in Paxton’s coalition of supporters. “It really turns a lot of voters off, quite candidly.”

“They’re tired of the name-calling. They’re tired of the blaming,” he said.

Katie Zacharia's farewell photo 'inadvertently provided evidence' against Trump in court - Raw Story

Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff to Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), said he knew the spot. “It’s Hains Point and East Potomac Park,” he wrote. He said that if you turn the photo to Trump’s view, “you can see Buckeye Drive running straight across.”

East Potomac Golf Links, a public course that’s about a century old, is at the center of a federal lawsuit over Trump’s plan to rebuild it. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes temporarily blocked the National Park Service from cutting down more trees there. Crews had already taken out about 430. The administration has argued in court that the cutting carries out a 2019 landscape report and has nothing to do with Trump’s redesign.

‘Happy Birthday, Vlad. Yours, Always.’ - DJT. (The Bulwark)

It’s amazing how many of Trump’s psychological pathologies are here on display at once. There is, of course, his bewildering personal adulation of Putin himself, which makes it all too easy for the Russian dictator to feed him out-and-out lies about the state of the conflict and who is responsible. There’s his alpha-dog approach to geopolitics, which he believes shows great strength and in reality shows great weakness: The United States, Trump apparently believes, ought not lift a finger or offer a word of protest if the world’s other great powers decide to invade their neighbors. Instead, those great powers must be cherished and coddled, lest we “drive them away from the bargaining table” and they decide to intervene in our own imperial adventures.

Note how different this argument is from the old MAGA ones about how the whole conflict is an expensive boondoggle halfway around the world that we shouldn’t be involved with at all. Trump, fully in his own imperial era, has jettisoned such provincial “Donroe Doctrine” thinking. He just argues, openly and explicitly, that it’s better for the United States to be allied with Russia. All this is music to Putin’s ears: The Russian dictator, the Wall Street Journal reports, is now proposing a tripartite summit between the United States, Russia, and China to hash out the ultimate fate of Ukraine.

 Trump’s two-front war: a deal with Putin, a citizenship fight with Omar (Steve Schmidt)

The energy crisis surrounding the Iran war becomes the justification for opening a revenue stream to Moscow. Meanwhile, reporting has described Russian intelligence and technical assistance to Iran during that war. The administration is fighting Iran while economically accommodating a government helping Iran fight back.

Functionally, Trump has entangled American policy with both sides of the conflict. American service members bear the risks. Putin gets an opportunity. Trump claims a deal.

We once possessed leaders capable of explaining why freedom abroad concerned us— and why American strength carried responsibilities beyond extracting an immediate advantage.

 

Nothing needs to be added. Staying with Trump means our ruin.

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