For Trump, Cheers and Jeers

Terry H. Schwadron

May 11, 2018

Can we step back for a moment?

Let’s applaud the Donald Trump whose contentious Secretary of State Mike Pompeo returned from North Korea with three Americans who had been held hostage. For the moment, let’s set aside that North Korea is marching to its own drumbeat, and may or may not have been doing the United States a favor in pre-summit maneuvering.

I really dislike the political nature of the hostage issue; the important thing is that three hostages have been returned home.

Indeed, it may be that North Korea is playing some game with Chinato balance some kind of agreement with the United States to balance renewed Chinese moves to dominate East Asia. Other than recognition as a standing nation, which the U.S. has granted by agreeing to a summit, we don’t know what North Korea really wants.

But again, stepping back, North Korea may be ready to make significant concessions to the United States’ demands — or appear to do so.

Political conclusions aside, I hope we give Donald Trump credit for his part in all of this, though I suspect that whatever happens is a lot more dependent on how Kim Jong Un is feeling on the day of the summit. I doubt, for example, that demands by the U.S. alone are responsible for the good news of the hostage release.

Likewise, Trump should be proud that unemployment statistics fell to historic lows, but he should also be aware that economies are beasts that move largely outside of government intervention. The statistical underpinning for the fall is at least eight years old.

It is clear that President Trump wants the hostage release to cover a lot of other presidential sins. It is nuts to conclude that Trump is merely trying to distract through his strange and unconnected foreign policy moves this week, but it remains unclear exactly what he is trying to accomplish other than parading in front of television like a militaristic dictator himself.

The order to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal now has been roundly criticized by people of all political stripe and a variety of international leaders. It has revealed that beneath the action itself is little strategic thinking, a kind of diplomatic emperor-with-no-clothes situation. And it seems, after all, to show off the fruits of a president having shed himself of a national security team with advisers with experience and nuance for those who, like John Bolton, prefer to live out lives based on slogans that even Donald Trump has previously rejected, like Regime Change.

As a result, we are left increasingly isolated in a world that will seek other alliances with China and Russia, and start to ignore the United States.

The president’s response is to denounce the media — and the rest of us — for doing its job to show that the president is basing his decisions more on emotionthan strategic considerations. Indeed, he has started talking again about banishing reporters who do not write what he considers positive coverage of his presidency from the White House, a standard move for any self-respecting despotic autocrat. He believes in himself alone, and now expects the rest of us to fall in line without independent thought.

Even opponents of the Iran deal have considered side-letter alternatives to strengthen it, just as with health care, immigration, trade, education, energy and environmental policy, rather than standing stubbornly for elimination of the offending deal. This is not a matter of “style,” alone, then; it is policy based on gut rather than grit.

The reading of the day’s news is not about achievement, it has become a roundup of movements, actions, elections and speeches that diminish the human condition. It is about demeaning remarks that add to division, and that insist on a Me-centric view of the world. That starts with and extends back to the White House, where anything that is objectionable is seen as “fake.”

Yet the same Donald Trump that wants adulation because the hostage situation and maybe even the oversimplified us-vs.-them North Korea issues may work out, that somehow should overbalance and remove any obligation for him to recognize Russian interference in U.S. elections, or the shocking number of ethics-related scandals in his administration, or the very substantial concerns of the Special Counsel investigation.

Even as Rudy Giuliani (who apparently has been ousted by his law firm) and Anthony “The Mooch” Scaramucci take to cable television to decry the investigations, there are new disclosures of problematic information about money flowing from Russians and corporations into a Michael Cohen shell companies for . . . what may be some unknown amount of influence with the new administration. We don’t know. How can the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III be taking too much time and effort if new information is continuing to emerge. What has taken no time at all is for an embattled president to rise on his back legs and bay at the moon over fake this and that and lying media, lying prosecutors, lying FBI and Justice officials, lying women and lying Democrats.

Here’s a basic truth. If you want adulation from the public and treat all around you as if you are in some kind of television reality show, you are going to be skewered from time to time by the same kind of set-up.

Let’s celebrate the hostage release. But that doesn’t excuse Cabinet scandals, a concerted campaign to trash the environment, an economic program aimed at rewarding the rich over the rest of us, likely criminal activities in pursuit of winning or operating in office and the rest.

Mr. Trump, try listening before you speak.

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