Some people are calling the VP debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance last night a “wash” or with a “slight” advantage for Vance. While most in the media think that Vance “won” the debate, apparently based on the moderators repeating lies made by Vance and Trump, and engaging in breathtakingly ignorant false equivalencies, USA Today reports among likely voters in a poll by Politico, “Among the ‘other’ category, which includes independents, 34% of voters surveyed thought Walz won the debate while 25% chose Vance. Forty-four percent of voters thought Walz would make the better vice president while 36% chose Vance.”
Another poll that showed that both of their approval ratings improved after the debate is more telling—that Walz’s approval rating went from 52 to 60 percent, while Vance’s went from 30 to 41 percent. That means that Walz still has a significant advantage over Vance, since the latter still has to overcome some serious negatives concerning his belief in various lies and conspiracies that he will likely return to back on the campaign trail, which the media needs to point out; just because he tells lies and conspiracies in a “calmer,” less demented way than the man he is tagging along for the ride with doesn’t make what he says less “crazy.”
The psychiatric term for someone who believes his or her own lies is “psychopath,” so we can say that at the very least Vance is feeding into Trump’s psychological state, since Trump is clearly completely consumed with the alternate “reality” that he has created for himself, as people who read his Truth Social posts can clearly (or should) see for themselves.
That leads us to one thing that polls seem to suggest Trump has an edge over Kamala Harris, besides the constant border hysteria and demonizing and dehumanizing migrants: foreign policy. Tell me, Trump supporters: name one single international initiative that Trump supported or introduced that came to anything—you know, the “leadership” thing? Zero, nada, nothing. All Trump did was attempt to “erase” the international accomplishments of Barack Obama, such as attempting to vacate the Paris Climate Agreement, and pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement, which claimed to have these benefits in an effort to thwart China's trade stranglehold:
No, Trump doesn't support any of those things as a matter of actual "action" or a "plan," as if we didn't know that already. He and his friends may say they do not like China, but they admire its "methods." Trump “replaced” this with the inflationary-for-consumers tariffs on some Chinese imports. Trump claims to have done this to “bring back jobs”—presumably manufacturing jobs—which in fact did not happen during his administration, only the loss of such. Trump always claims that he is only thinking of “working people,” but as the Brookings Institute has pointed out, Trump doesn't actually "think," but pulls out whatever is ailing his gut:
There is no escaping the fact that Trump is a unique figure in American presidential history. He is unique ideologically. No other post-war president believed the radical things he believes. He is unique cognitively and in how he processes information. No other president trusted crazy cable talk shows over his own intelligence agencies. He is unique temperamentally. No other president, not even Nixon, was as thin-skinned or as insecure. And he is unique intellectually. No other president knew less about history and current affairs than Trump. And no one cared less about what they did not know.
Trump’s foreign policy has been nothing but a disaster because of this, and the effects of it only continues. After he threatened to blow the whole of North Korea to kingdom come did Kim Jong Un send him what Trump called a “love letter,” which Trump responded to by allowing Kim a photo-op with him, which most people criticized because it only strengthen Kim’s “standing” and power in a country where looking sidewise at the “supreme leader” could mean a death sentence. Instead we saw a U.S. president debasing himself before a dangerous mini-me without first having an agreement ready to sign for that first “personal” meeting.
Instead, Kim—who had no intention of destroying his nuclear arms stock—took advantage of Trump’s foolish nature and weakness for flattery, and led him on until Trump simply dropped the whole thing. Whether by intent or by surprise that Trump was so easy to play, Kim merely has become more dangerous and less controllable thanks to Trump’s incompetence that is now impossible to "fix" without a major military offensive that Trump himself could not now prevent, save simply allowing North Korea to do in South Korea what Putin is doing in Ukraine.
Then there is Iran. In a post last May, Responsible Statecraft had this to say about Trump’s withdrawal from another Obama accomplishment, the Iran nuclear deal:
Then President Trump unilaterally left the deal, calling it a “horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.” And now we are in a much worse place. Iran says it has no intent to produce nuclear weapons and U.S. intelligence sees no current efforts by Tehran to weaponize, yet Tehran is believed to be not one year but just weeks from being able to produce enough fissile material for a bomb if it chooses to do so.
At the same time, the ability of international inspectors to detect violations in a timely manner has eroded. As one U.S. officials said of Iran, “they are dancing right up to the edge.”
Worse still, relations between the United States and Iran have been so damaged by Trump’s withdrawal that it does not appear as though the deal can be resurrected. Any efforts to stabilize the U.S.-Iran relationship have been severely complicated by the recent exchange of direct attacks between Israel and Iran. Just as we need a non-military approach more than ever, the prospects for a diplomatic solution appear distant.
What’s worse is that increasing tensions may be pushing Tehran closer to a political decision to go nuclear. The danger of an Iranian bomb and the related risk that Israel could attack Iran’s nuclear sites could lead to wider military conflict in the region. Of course, it did not have to be this way. The deal was working until Trump abandoned it and, if he had not, it could still be working today.
Trump’s resuming of all sanctions against Iran not only discredited “moderates” in Iran and gave the Islamist leadership an excuse to ignore the treaty, but gave it no reason to “moderate” its activities abroad or even enter into “negotiations” again on the matter. Israel opposed the nuclear deal and welcomed Trump's move, but has that made the country “safer”? Clearly it has not. Trump’s incompetence and juvenile desire to simply undo the accomplishments of the Obama administration without a “plan” about what to do next have been lasting and damaging to both this country’s credibility and ability to control events.
Wait, about the “deal” with the Taliban? The New York Times noted that
The United States agreed to withdraw in return for Taliban promises not to harbor terrorists and to engage in their first direct negotiations with the Afghan government. Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, attended the signing ceremony in Doha and posed for a photo alongside the Taliban leader, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, which resurfaced this week on social media.
“Our secretary of state signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban,” Mr. Trump’s second national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, said of Mr. Pompeo during a podcast interview with the journalist Bari Weiss on Wednesday. “This collapse goes back to the capitulation agreement of 2020. The Taliban didn’t defeat us. We defeated ourselves.”
And in an interview with CNN on Wednesday, former Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper said that, while President Biden “owns” the ultimate outcome in Afghanistan, Mr. Trump had earlier “undermined” the agreement through his barely disguised impatience to exit the country with little apparent regard for the consequences. That included an October 2020 declaration by Mr. Trump that he wanted the 5,000 American troops then in Afghanistan home by Christmas.
Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Pompeo has responded to such criticism with contrition. Instead, they have attacked Mr. Biden for what they call his disastrous execution of the pullout they set in motion.
Not only that, but Trump agreed to release 5,000 Taliban fighters, putting the Taliban at its greatest operational strength since 2001. Trump did this despite “reliable intelligence” that indicated that the Taliban had no intention of following through on the agreement, which included "talks" with the U.S.-supported civilian government.
Trump not only knew this and did not care, but even later boasted that he “started the process” and asserted that Biden “couldn’t stop it even if he wanted to.” Sounds a lot like how Trump “reopened” the border after his election loss in 2020 was for all practical purposes confirmed.
Trump claims that he can “stop” the war in Ukraine. Politico noted that Alexander Vindman, who testified against Trump during his first impeachment, claimed that invading Ukraine was a frequent topic in discussions between Trump and Putin, although due to the classified nature of the discussions he cannot disclose exactly what was said, which of course allows Trump make any claims he wants to now.
What we do know is that Trump made no effort to “persuade” Putin to withdraw what everyone knew were Russian troops who invaded eastern Ukraine during his watch—merely calling off a meeting or two with Putin if it was perceived that Putin was doing what he usually did with Trump: ignore him and do what he was going to do anyways.
Vindman also asserted that the “weakness” that Putin perceived that allowed him to ignore warnings against invading Ukraine in 2022 rested solely with Trump, “with the positioning for the second military wave came soon after the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, ‘Putin took advantage of the domestic divisions Trump created — he thought we were weak.’”
Putin clearly did not perceive that the West (let alone a divisively-partisan U.S.) would unite against him; he could not believe that after all that Trump had done to weaken U.S. credibility with its allies and undermine NATO, that the U.S. could lead again, this time under Biden, against his aggression.
Of course as Peter Stone in The Guardian pointed out last March concerning Trump’s continuing “bromance” with Putin,
Donald Trump’s continuing lavish praise and support for Vladimir Putin are fueling alarm among former intelligence officials and other experts who fear another Trump presidency would benefit Moscow and harm American democracy and interests overseas.
Trump praised the Russian president as a “genius” and “pretty savvy” when Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, and has boasted he would end the war in a “day”, sparking critics’ fears that if he’s elected again Trump would help Russia achieve a favorable peace deal by cutting off aid to Kyiv. Trump also recently greenlit Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato members who don’t pay enough to the alliance.
There were other significant signs of Trump cozying up to Russia during his presidency, including a bizarre Oval office meeting with the Russian ambassador and foreign minister where Trump shared classified information. Now veteran intelligence officials and other experts say they have strong worries should Trump become president again, in light of the ongoing Putin-Trump bromance.
“Putin much prefers the chaos agent of Trump because it undermines the US,” Fiona Hill said. “Trump’s not worried about national security, but focused on himself. In paring back the US government and appointing loyalists, Trump will get rid of vital security expertise. Trump is shockingly ignorant” about foreign affairs, Hill added. “Trump rarely read materials he was given before meetings. Trump is less a threat to Russia, and more to the US given his approach to governance.”
Trump claims that World War III is “imminent” and that only he can “stop it.” Of course the problem is that he is the Neville “Peace in Our Time” Chamberlain of our age, but even worse, since he would (deliberately or not) enable today’s version of Hitler in his quest to restore the old Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact due to his contempt for countries that follow a more democratic path than he likes.
Trump’s attitude about the victims of invasions by his "friends" is like his attitude toward disabled people, which he communicated to his brother Fred Jr.: they should just allow themselves to "die" because they cost "too much." Trump's claim that he will “stop” wars is to simply allow the aggressors to invade and conquer without resistance from an agreeable self-made authoritarian like himself, who completely without a shred of forethought lavishes praise on anti-democratic dictators like Viktor Orban.
There is the suspicion that Trump has shared U.S. secrets with Putin, including the identity of a critical Kremlin informant that the CIA was forced to remove from Russia for his own safety. The Guardian story goes on
“Trump almost certainly will politicize the intelligence community by going forward with his public promise of installing people on the extreme fringes of right-wing politics such as Michael Flynn and Kash Patel,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, a former senior intelligence service official.
Patel, a former defense department official in the Trump years who has been touted as a possible acting attorney general or top CIA official if Trump wins again, late last year echoed Trump’s talk of seeking retribution against his enemies. Patel told Steve Bannon’s War Room: “We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in the government but in the media … who helped Joe Biden rig elections”
Polymeropoulos stressed that appointments of Flynn or Patel by Trump “would damage US ties with key allies. You’ll see old allies not sharing critical intelligence, and for good reason. They’ll slowly reduce sharing, so as not to provoke the ire of Trump, but their source protection concerns will be paramount and over-ride all else. The intelligence will dry up.”
“If Trump wins, forget the Brits or French – two of our best bilateral intelligence partners in Europe – ever sharing anything significant with us on Russia, for example.”
We have to ask ourselves that if Trump lies about everything, why would his foreign policy claims now be any different? We already know what he has (or hasn’t done). He says “millions” of people have been killed in Ukraine, again a number he pulled out of thin air; but who is “responsible” for that? Putin? Oh no, Biden is to blame.
We
should remember that when Trump claims he will “end” the war between Israel and
Hamas, we should also remember that he says he also opposes a “cease fire,” meaning allowing
Israel to bomb Gaza into a parking lot “quicker” to “end” the war "quicker." Trump really doesn’t
care how many people “need” to be killed to reach that end. He only cares about himself, and if "millions" need to die first, the better for him.
Trump seems to have the same attitude about intelligence as Israel does, at least in regard to the current conflict; Israeli military and intelligence knew the evidence of and even the date that Hamas intended to attack a year in advance, but the Israeli government apparently hoped to use an attack as a pretext to invade Gaza (George Bush also needed a “pretext” to invade Iraq and remove Saddam Hussein), but underestimated the level of the attack and the Israeli deaths that resulted.
Israeli public opinion turned against Netanyahu when this was first revealed, but the fickle public can change its mind, and doesn't see that it was Trump's "fickle" Iranian "policy" that helped refuel Iran's desire to refuel Hezbollah in the current conflict in southern Lebanon.
John Bolton, considered a foreign policy hawk, has been quoted in The Hill that if people think that foreign policy during Trump’s first term wasn’t “pretty,” it could get a whole lot uglier:
“I mean, you hear a lot of Trump advocates trying to reassure people saying the second term is not going to look like the first term; it’s going to be rational foreign policy,” the former White House official said. “I think … that they’re deceiving people — perhaps unconsciously, perhaps hoping.”
Hope, he said, is not an intelligent or useful strategy when it comes to giving Trump another opportunity to "run" the country again, except if you "hope" he runs into the ground.
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