The View from Right Field

How Was Trump Able to Come Back?

In a review of three books¹ on “The great Biden cover-up” in last Saturday’s Financial Times², Lionel Barber notes that missing in three books “is a deeper analysis of why Trump was able to stage of one of the greatest comebacks in US political life.”  Here is my suggestion: In looking back at 2021-24, the one constant was that every time Donald Trump was impeached, sued, indicted, or even convicted, his approval ratings among Republican voters went up. 

In January of 2021, I hoped those who were outraged by what Donald Trump had done would ignore him as he left the presidency and not give him new things he could use as grievances, however appropriate it was to do them, to begin his comeback.  That is not what happened.

Just Because I Disagree With Trump Doesn’t Mean I Agree With the Democrats

I have been complaining a lot about Donald Trump.  He has been worse than I expected, especially on foreign affairs.  But that doesn’t mean I have any confidence in today’s Democratic Party or want them to win either.

For example, when I see how bad President Trump is doing in Ukraine, I think that all, or at least much, of this could have been avoided if Joe Biden had delivered more weapons sooner and had allowed them be fully used, instead of limiting how Ukraine could use them.

But more importantly, there is the Democratic Party itself.  Until the night of the Biden-Trump debate in June of last year, all of the leading Democrats, except that one guy from North Dakota, told us President Biden was in fine shape, fully capable of doing his job, and fully capable of doing it for four more years.  And then we saw the debate, and we realized that wasn’t true.  President Biden wasn’t up to doing the job for four more years.  We couldn’t even tell if he was up to doing his job until January.

The Problems With Trump: #3 – Ukraine

With Donald Trump calling Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator, I worry President Trump will negotiate a deal with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine as bad as the deal he negotiated with the Taliban on Afghanistan in 2020.  While Joe Biden was the President who followed through on the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was then-President Trump who negotiated the surrender agreement in the first place.

Is President Trump going to do the same thing in Ukraine?  I am increasingly worried that he might.  It he does, the questions then will be: (i) to what extent can Ukraine can continue to fight if the United States abandons them; and (ii) whether “Europe” will (and actually can) offer enough support to allow Ukraine to effectively continue to fight.

Biden Is Breaking Traditions Because Trump Is a Threat to Traditions

The Washington Post reports today:

“Outgoing presidents often conclude their tenure with a flurry of activity, such as pardons or proclamations, but Biden’s efforts have been unusually wide-ranging, reflecting his conviction that Trump represents a unique threat to American traditions.”

So, in other words, the Biden administration is breaking American traditions, as to what an outgoing president does, because Donald Trump is a threat to American traditions.  As I said in a letter to the editor published by the Chicago Tribune a year ago:

Biden Retrospectives – And the Question That Is Not Being Asked

Every Saturday, the Financial Times has a “Lunch with the FT” interview.  This interview this past Saturday was with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.  The interview was mostly devoted, not surprisingly, to a recap, on the positive side of the Biden administration’s foreign policy.  However, the interviewer, FT correspondent Dimitri Sevastropulo, apparently never addressed the elephant, or should I say, donkey, in the room.  During the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings, Senator Howard Baker (R, Tennessee) famously said that the question was what did the President know and when did he know it.

The questions regarding Joe Biden, which Mr. Sevastropulo apparently did not ask, are: When did the President’s diminishing capacity start and when did Secretary Blinken realize it?  But in the case of President Biden, there is an additional question: Given the President’s clearly diminishing capacity, how could Secretary Blinken possibly think that he could serve another four years and why didn’t Secretary Blinken say something?

We Should Not Be Inaugurating Donald Trump as President on January 20

As the title of this post says, we should not be inaugurating Donald Trump as President on January 20, 2025, because … well, let me explain.

First, if it wasn’t for FBI Director James Comey and his totally bizarre decision to re-open the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server just eleven days before the 2016 election, it is entirely probable she would have won the election.¹  I am not sure Mr. Comey’s decision to do this has ever been adequately explained.  Even though Mr. Comey said, nine days later, on November 6, that nothing new was found, the damage was done.  By resurrecting the issue at the last minute of a very close election, Mr. Comey very probably swung the election to Donald Trump. 

Pardon for Hunter. Pardons for All?

With Hunter Biden pardoned, news reports are now telling us that the Biden administration is considering pardons for lots more people.  The rationale is that Donald Trump has threatened to go after numerous people once he gets in office, so the Biden administration has to give pardons to these people to protect them against persecution by the incoming Trump administration. 

While I understand the Biden administration’s theory, I hope they don’t do it.  First, I note that, even though Donald Trump said on the campaign trail in 2016 that he would go after Hillary Clinton, he never did so.  More importantly, however, giving blanket pardons to all of the people being mentioned would create a precedent that I don’t think anybody knows the consequences of. 

Hunter Biden. Grifter.

I wrote all I needed to write about Hunter Biden, and his grifting, ten years ago when it was disclosed that Hunter was getting paid by a Ukrainian gas company controlled by a top official in the former government of a pro-Russian president of Ukraine.  At the time, both the White House press office and Vice President Biden’s office said that Hunter Biden's activities were those of a private citizen and didn’t involve the U.S. government. 

It may have been true that what Hunter Biden was doing back then wasn’t illegal, but it was wrong.  The children of Presidents and Vice Presidents shouldn’t be getting paid by foreign governments or their affiliates, whether current or former.  I realize that it can be tough for children of famous/important people, but I can think of lots of children and grandchildren of presidents who haven’t needed to grift for a living.

It would have been better if, in 2014, somebody had told Hunter to knock it off.  If then-Vice President Biden couldn’t do it, and he apparently couldn't, it’s too bad somebody in the Obama administration didn’t do it for him.

The West’s Race to the Bottom in Ukraine – For Worst Policy

We have what looks like a race to the bottom for worst Ukraine policy among Joe Biden, Donald Trump, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.  After almost 1,000 days of war, President Biden finally gave Ukraine permission to use US weapons, including ATACMS, to actually attack Russian targets in Russia.  The story is that Biden was worried about Putin escalating (how about worrying about Putin winning) and about the US not having enough ATACMS for ourselves (how about ordering a lot more of them on an emergency basis, starting like almost 1,000 days ago).¹

Trump people are saying the Russians pushing the Ukrainians back might be good because it would make the Ukrainians more willing to negotiate.¹  Huh?  The problem is not the Ukrainians being willing to negotiate.  The problem is Putin being willing to negotiate when he is winning.  Why should he? 

Trump Gets a 2024-Style Landslide and We Avoid the First Crisis

In December of last year and January of this year (among others), I worried about what I called “The Coming Constitutional Crisis of 2024.”  In particular, in January I wrote:

“If [Harris] spends the whole campaign talking about Trump being a threat to democracy, what happens if Trump wins the election?  … If Trump is a clear winner and yet [Harris] has spent the whole campaign saying Trump is a threat to democracy, what will [Harris] do?  More importantly, what will [Harris]’s supporters do?  Will they have protest marches, and more, all over the country?  Will more state and local prosecutors charge him with new crimes?  Will the media constantly tell us that Trump’s presidency is illegitimate and talk about how dangerous he is to democracy, even though he won?”