Category Archives: Donald Trump

Dennis Rodman Infinitely Better Qualified To Negotiate With North Korea Than Neocons In Trump Admin

Donald Trump, Foreign Policy, libertarianism, Sport

A few days back, I updated an old post from 09.09.13, about Dennis Rodman’s goodwill trips to North Korea. It didn’t occur to me that the update, secreted in the post, “Dennis Rodman (& Russia) Promoting Global Peace,” would become relevant anytime soon, given Trump’s abysmally disappointing foreign policy direction. “Update (6/7/2017)” was just another thought to file away.

UPDATE (6/7/2017): President Trump will get more from North Korea and its patriotic people, who prefer their own dictator to American-imposed democracy, if he sends as an emissary a man who endeavored to open up that closed and cloistered society to outside influence through positive, voluntary exchanges and interactions, not threats; a man who opted for slow, laborious efforts that preclude lobbing bombs at North Korea or depriving its poor, long-suffering people of contact with the world. That man is Dennis Rodman.

We libertarians are not being cynical when we advocate peaceful diplomacy with nations rather than intervening in conflicts we don’t grasp and dropping Daisy Cutters on them because we can.

Well, “Rodman is making a return trip to North Korea,” reports Fox News. While Trump is not quite confessing to initiating the move, “a senior Trump administration official seems to know about the trip and has confirmed [the story] to Fox News.”

Maybe the penny has dropped and Trump has begun to understand that if he takes this country to war, he’s toast.

Time to Rethink … Newt Gingrich

Conservatism, Donald Trump, Republicans, Russia

“Republicans Will Regret Celebrating Robert Mueller As Savior,” I wrote in a blog post, on May 19, and reiterated on YouTube. Reposted below.

What do you know! A prominent (and tiresome) Republican has just “regretted celebrating Robert Mueller as savior.”

Tweeted Newt Gingrich on 17 May:

Robert Mueller is superb choice to be special counsel. His reputation is impeccable for honesty and integrity. Media should now calm down.

Less than a month later, and Newt is tweeting this:

“Republicans are delusional if they think the special counsel is going to be fair. Look who he is hiring. check fec reports. Time to rethink.”

As I once wrote, “consistency is the touchstone of truth.” Republican politicians, for the most, are inconsistent and therefore untruthful.

On May 18, 2017, when the time was right to reject Mueller:

Turns Out Comey Looks Down At Trump In Every Way

Donald Trump, Ethics, Etiquette, Federalism, Government, Intelligence

At 6’8”, 2.03m, James Comey towers over other mortals. Slender and clean cut, Comey cuts quite a figure. He carries himself and conducts himself like a patrician. But he’s also a snob who looks down at others, and certainly at the president.

A friend says James Comey “felt it was his job to protect the FBI from Trump,” and that Comey was “‘disgusted’ by the Trump hug.”

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You described Comey’s concerns as — quote — “improper contacts and interferences from a group of people he, Comey, didn’t regard as honorable.”

What gave you that sense that he didn’t view these people as honorable people?

BENJAMIN WITTES: It was written on every line in his face. It was evident in the disapproving tone that he took when he described them.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Including the president?

BENJAMIN WITTES: Oh, very much so. The color of wallpaper was that these were not honorable people, and that protecting the FBI from them was his day job.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: You write about the famous hug, when Comey was asked to come with a bunch of different law enforcement agents to the White House soon after the inauguration.

BENJAMIN WITTES: Yes. So, Comey really didn’t want to go that meeting. And there were a lot of Democrats who kind of blame him for Trump. So, he was particularly sensitive to the idea of a sort of show of intimacy or closeness with Trump. That said, he didn’t feel that he could say no to an invitation from the president, particularly one that went generally to law enforcement senior officials. He really wanted to kind of blend in and not be singled out. And he’s 6’8”. So, when you’re…

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Kind of tough to do that.

BENJAMIN WITTES: And when you’re 6’8”, it’s really hard to blend in. And he stands in the part of the room that is as far from Trump as is physically possible to be, and also against blue drapes.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: He chose that spot?

BENJAMIN WITTES: He chose that spot because it was — almost like a chameleon. And then, at the end, right at the end, Trump singles him out in a fashion that he regarded as sort of calculated to maximally drive home this sensitivity of Democratic voters.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: He’s become more famous than me.

BENJAMIN WITTES: And he extends his hand kind of preemptively, and Trump grabs the hand and kind of pulls him into a hug, but the hug is entirely one-sided. And Comey was just completely disgusted by the episode. He thought it was an intentional attempt to compromise him in public, in a way that would sow and emphasize concerns that half of the electorate had about him and the bureau.

MORE at PBS.

NEW COLUMN: Trump Fends Off ‘Showboat’ Comey And The Federal Zombies

Business, Donald Trump, Russia, The State

“Trump Fends Off ‘Showboat’ Comey And The Federal Zombies” is the current column, now on American Thinker. An excerpt:

He pleaded the case of a loyal soldier, rather than forsake retired US Army lieutenant general Michael Flynn to the mercies of FBI director James Comey. And he asked for loyalty from the congenitally disloyal. You’ll agree: President Donald Trump is being indicted on technicalities and on personal style.

Distill the president’s unremarkable actions, subject to a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, and it becomes clear that The establishment—for sensible people outside the beltway have dissociate from the Russia-collusion phantasmagoria—is indicting him on the plain, impolitic speech that catapulted Donald Trump from candidate to president.

Trump is “aggressive and oblivious to the rules of engagement,” fumed CNN’s sibilant Chris Cillizza, formerly of the Washington Post. Correct. But was the language of combat you deployed, Mr. Cillizza, a Freudian slip?

The president’s linguistic infelicities—a word salad, at times—have given the press popinjays and their Washington overlords the foothold needed to go after the president. Throw in the “bad” habits of a businessman he has retained. Trump transacts with everyone—Russians too. We voted for deals, not wars.

This is the sum and substance of President Trump’s offenses. That, and beating Hillary Clinton to the White House.

Proponents of free-markets understand how business operates. Statists don’t. To the statist, the Fake News fabricator and the stark raving mad Washington Post (WaPo), “Trump sitting next to Russian Ambassador Yuri Dubinin, at a luncheon hosted by Leonard Lauder, the oldest son of Estée Lauder,” in 1986, is incriminating evidence … of something.

The tidbit made it on to a sinister WaPo list, “Team Trump’s ties to Russian interests.” To the same statists, Trump “meeting with Russian businessmen, including a real estate developer,” in 2013, “while in Moscow for his Miss Universe competition,” is yet more circumstantial evidence of … something.

Citizen Trump was bringing a fun event to Russia! To members of the American media-military-congressional-industrial complex, being amicable with foreign interests is a foreign concept. At the same time, he did some business there. Inconceivable! Had Mr. Trump smuggled a dirty bomb into Russia, under the “clever” guise of pursuing commerce, his militant enemies stateside might forgive him today. The tools threatening President Trump with impeachment have one bag of tricks stuffed with power tools: they audit, indict, arrest, bomb, change regimes. They don’t make profitable business deals; they tax them. They don’t make peace; they wage war.

Prone to seeing faces in the clouds, the reporters—they’ve lost their minuscule minds—frame the act of putting in a kind word for “a good guy,” as Trump did in February 2017, for Gen. Michael Flynn, as an obstruction of justice. …

… READ the rest. “Trump Fends Off ‘Showboat’ Comey And The Federal Zombies” is the current column, now on American Thinker.