The View from Right Field

TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome

We have previously had ODS and BDS (i.e., Obama Derangement Syndrome and Bush Derangement Syndrome [George W. Bush, that is]).  ODS and BDS can be explained as stressing out over President Obama or President Bush all the time, thinking that everything wrong was their fault, and worrying that the country might never recover.  We had a form of CDS (i.e., Clinton Derangement Syndrome) back in the nineties (particularly during Bill Clinton’s second term), even if it wasn’t called that.¹  There was probably a RRDS (i.e., Ronald Reagan Derangement Syndrome), though it, too, would not have had that name.  There definitely was a NDS (i.e., Nixon Derangement Syndrome), which started not in 1969 or 1973 (with Watergate), but in 1948.²  However, I don’t think any of them, even ODS, was as all-consuming as TDS (except maybe NDS during the last few months of Watergate).

TDS has been going full strength since Donald Trump was inaugurated – if not since he was elected (or before).³   It’s hard to read a newspaper or watch a news show (or check your smartphone, for those who get their news that way) without seeing all kinds of things about Donald Trump: good, bad, crazy, porn, etc.  And we have 33 months to go (at a minimum).

The James Comey Interview and Hillary Clinton’s Campaign

There have been, and will continue to be, all kinds of comments on former FBI Director James Comey’s interview broadcast yesterday on “Sunday on ABC.”  What Mr. Comey said about Donald Trump.  What President Trump tweeted about Mr. Comey.  I will leave that to others.

What I wanted to comment on was what Mr. Comey said about the role politics played in his announcement in late October of 2016 that the FBI was reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.  According to the Los Angeles Times:

“During the interview, Comey acknowledged that at the time, he was convinced Clinton would win, and that belief probably influenced his decision to write the letters.

How to Get Donald Trump to Act on Russian Meddling in Our Elections

If people really want Donald Trump to take Russian meddling with our elections seriously (which would be a good thing), maybe it would help if they stopped saying President Trump’s election was illegitimate because Russian interference got him elected.  Just a suggestion.

The Nunes Memo

I think I can safely say that one’s view of the Nunes memo will depend more on what you believed before you read it than what you may have learned from reading it.  Because we do have our own facts.  And confirmation bias is a wonderful thing.

Jake Tapper may have had the best idea:

• release the Nunes memo
• release the Schiff memo
• release the underlying intelligence
• release the FISA warrant applications and renewals

If the government doesn’t want to release all of these for national security reasons, maybe we can get The New York Times or The Post to do it.
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UPDATE ( 2/2/18: 6:23 pm): Inserted a missing word: "have", in the first sentence.

Donald Trump As a Dangerous President: The Problem With Crying Wolf

Democrats, and others, have called, and continue to call, Donald Trump the worst prepared president we have ever had with respect to foreign policy.  They see his instincts and lack of knowledge as dangerous. 

While I agree with many of these thoughts, the problem Democrats have in making this complaint is that it sounds so familiar.  It is hard for me to think of a Republican president in my lifetime (which is not a short period of time), who was not, when running for office and, usually, when in office, criticized by Democrats as ill-prepared, impulsive, and/or just dumb.

Dwight Eisenhower, even after he left office, was viewed by Democrats and academicians (assuming there is much of a difference) as a congenial grandfather type who didn’t run things or understand how government ran.  Harry Truman famously said of President Eisenhower, when he was running for president: “He’ll sit here, and he’ll say, ‘Do this!  Do that!’  And nothing will happen.  Poor Ike – it won’t be a bit like the Army.  He’ll find it very frustrating.”  Truman was talking of a man who had successfully gotten Generals Bernard Montgomery, Omar Bradley, and George Patton to cooperate in the invasion of western Europe, and yet Truman, and many others, thought Eisenhower didn’t understand politics or know how to get things done.

Is Vladimir Putin Having Buyer’s Remorse?

The Democrats’ story of the 2016 presidential election has been that (i) Vladimir Putin hacked and otherwise interfered with the election to elect Donald Trump president or (ii) President Trump and his campaign colluded and conspired with the Russians – or maybe both.  Even The Washington Post says that the second is not proven (“yet” is the operative word for the Post), but it’s not stopping the Democrats from believing it. 

According to the Democrats, the Russians were trying to help Donald Trump because President Putin really disliked Hillary Clinton (for, inter alia, her comments, while Secretary of State, about Russia’s presidential election in 2012 and because of all the nice things Mr. Trump was saying about President Putin and Russia during the campaign.

Mosul and Hillary Clinton’s Campaign: Winning, Losing, and Figuring Out Why

On Saturday, The Wall Street Journal reported on an assessment prepared by U.S. and British military officers of the successful effort to take Mosul back from Islamic State forces.  The top U.S. general in the effort, Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, ordered the review.  The Journal noted:

“It is common for the military to analyze the lessons of its operations, but its examination of the hard-fought Mosul campaign has particular relevance.  The battle was a test of a new type of warfare the U.S. has employed in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan in recent years – one in which most ground combat is done by indigenous forces with Americans providing advisers and firepower.”

While the campaign was successful, the report looked at not only what worked, but also what didn’t.  For example:

Hillary Clinton Keeps Making Richard Nixon Look Better

In an interview with Mother Jones published yesterday, Hillary Clinton said, “there are lots of questions about [the] legitimacy” of last year’s presidential election.  Former Secretary of State Clinton cited both Russian interference and alleged voter suppression in places like Wisconsin as affecting the outcome and possibly costing her the election.  She went on: “We don’t have a method for contesting that in our system.  That’s why I’ve long advocated for an independent commission to get to the bottom of what happened.”

Former Secretary Clinton seems to be having problems accepting the result of last November’s election.  And she continues to challenge the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s election.

DNC and Clinton Campaign Paid for Russian Opposition Research on Trump

Based on reports in The Washington Post Tuesday evening, we now know that the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign gave money to a law firm, who gave money to a political opposition research firm, who gave money to a former British spy, who was supposed to look for whatever information he could find about connections between Donald Trump and Russia, which most probably means the British spy gave money to a bunch of Russians to get “dirt” on Donald Trump.¹ 

The result of these payments was the famous (or infamous) dossier of, in the words of the Post, “salacious claims about connections between Donald J. Trump, his associates and Russia” that was published by Buzzfeed in January.  And which nobody in the mainstream media would publish before the election because they could not confirm the claims in it.

Predawn Search Warrants. Fun for Some. But Are They Necessary?

Late last month, FBI agents served a search warrant at the home of former Donald Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.  Which is fine.  If they think Mr. Manafort has evidence of something untoward, a search warrant is what you do.  What I don’t understand is why they felt the need to serve the search warrant before dawn.

This seems to be a not unusual time to serve search warrants.  Back when Democrats were investigating whatever they could about Scott Walker's campaigns, they would serve search warrants before dawn.¹  You sort of wonder whether some of those issuing such search warrants enjoy the idea of having people with guns knock on doors before dawn, while people are still asleep, to scare the heck out of the people upon whom the search warrant is being served.  (Especially if they think the people being served are engaged in some kind of evil activity.)  But do the ends of justice really require that it be done before dawn?