The View from Right Field

President Trump’s Foreign Policy Claims Are Often Bizarre, But It’s Not the First Time We’ve Seen That

The foreign policy follies (and worse) of Donald Trump are so bad, it sometimes makes us forget bizarre positions that prior administrations have taken.  For example, in 2011, when the United States was involved in the bombing of Libya (because, inter alia, Moammar Gaddafi was threatening to massacre Libyan civilians), the question of the War Powers Act arose.  The War Powers Act was passed over President Nixon’s veto in 1973.  It provided that presidents are to get Congress’s approval or authorization within 60 days¹ after they send troops into hostilities.

The Obama administration, however, did not want to seek Congressional approval of our operations in Libya.  But it also did not want to say, as other presidents have said, that the War Powers Act was an unconstitutional limit on the President’s power.² So, the State Department legal advisor, a politically appointed position, came up with the theory that the War Powers Act did not apply to the bombing of Libya because we were not engaged in “hostilities” since the other side could not effectively shoot back at us.  (See here and here,)

The 2019 Political World - In Two Cartoons

The one on the left is from Tuesday's Financial Times.  The one on the right is from today's Wall Street Journal.

Does President Trump’s Hard Line Go Away in Person?

An article in The Washington Post this morning, with the headline “Trump’s hard line approach appears to soften in meetings with world leaders,” starts out:

“President Trump entered his meeting with President Xi Jinping over the weekend promising to take a tough approach on trade negotiations and pressure his Chinese counterpart into a sweeping deal.

But the meeting did not produce an agreement – and Trump’s stance seemed to only soften as he announced he was relaxing limits on Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and delaying new tariffs on Chinese goods in hopes of restarting trade talks with Beijing.”

Republican Versus Trumpian

Back in the middle of May, Janan Ganesh, a columnist for the Financial Times, said, per the headline of his column, “Trump needs more Trumpians in the White House.”  According to Mr. Ganesh:

“Between them, [national security advisor John] Bolton and [acting White House chief of staff Mick] Mulvaney stand for the kind of Republicanism that Mr Trump was meant to have slain in 2016. …

Mike Pompeo could be the secretary of state in a Republican government of yesteryear.  Treasury secretary Steven Munchin could have served any recent Grand Old Party president.  It is much harder to name members of this administration who are truly in President Trump’s distinct image.

Is an Attempt to Impeach President Trump Coming – And Who Will It Help?

I never thought I would sympathize with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and I still don’t.  But if ever I was going to sympathize with her, we are getting close to when it would happen.  Two people who might sympathize with her are a couple of her predecessors, John Boehner and Paul Ryan.  Messrs. Boehner and Ryan understand the problems that Ms. Pelosi is having with the impeachment wing of her party because of the problems they had with the right-wing crazies in their caucuses.  The members of the “Freedom Caucus” and others among the House Republicans seemed to have this theory that somehow it was better to hold out for 100%, and wind up with nothing, than to agree to accept 70%.

The impeachment wing of the Democratic caucus is causing Speaker Pelosi many of the same problems – and maybe even more because it appears to be bigger than the right-wing crazy group in the House Republicans.¹ 

President Trump Is So Bad Anything Is a Reason to Get Rid of Him – Or At Least Some People Think So

Democrats are upset that Attorney General William Barr has authorized an investigation into whether the law enforcement and intelligence communities had proper basis for investigating the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential campaign.  The main point they seem to make is that Donald Trump is so bad that, of course, there were proper grounds.  It’s sort of like the Robert Mueller investigation.  When it started out, the Democrats, et al, “knew” Mr. Mueller would find evidence that then-candidate Trump, or at least the Trump campaign, colluded with the Russians – because, after all, Donald Trump is bad, so how else could he have won.  When Mr. Mueller didn’t find evidence of collusion, they pretty much decided that Russian interference was the same thing as collusion in terms of justification for getting rid of President Trump.¹ 

They are also upset that Attorney General Barr has been given authority to declassify information in connection with this investigation.  Because they say he will do it, without regard to national security, in order to help President Trump.  Of course, many of these same people want to breach laws and ignore privacy concerns with respect to the redactions in the Mueller report (also here), so consistency doesn’t really seem to be a real issue here – other than “President Trump is bad” and nothing else matters.

Did the FBI “Spy” On the Trump Campaign – And Was It Justified?

Before Attorney General William Barr releases the redacted report from Special Counsel William Mueller on Thursday, let me comment on the furor he caused last week when he told a Senate committee that he was going to have the Justice Department investigate whether the “spying” by the Justice Department on the Trump campaign during the 2016 campaign was, in his words, “adequately predicated.”  Attorney General Barr said, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal,” and he said he wants to make sure there was a legitimate reason for it.

A number of Democrats went ballistic.  Even though Attorney General Barr merely said he was going to have the Justice Department investigate whether there was an adequate basis for the surveillance, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said “the chief law enforcement officer of our country is going off the rails.”  The head of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, said that Attorney General Barr’s comments struck “another destructive blow to our democratic institutions.”

A Few More Comments on the Stupid Shutdown

A few comments on the federal government shutdown, though I am not sure they add all that much to what I wrote back on January 3.  In any case, it is all the news, so here goes.

1. As I understand the shutdown, it boils down to this:  President Trump thinks that it is better to have a government shutdown than it is to not build the wall he wants to build.  The Democrats in Congress, on the other hand, think it is better to have a government shutdown than it is to let President Trump build the wall he wants to build.  Or, at least, that is how they are acting.

Comments on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Investigation

A few comments on Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, not in any particular order.

1.  First, I have no idea when Mr. Mueller will be completing his investigation and/or issuing a report. While there have been reports in the press that it might be soon, nobody knows – or at least nobody who is talking about it in the media knows.

2.  While the original impetus for Mr. Mueller’s investigation was the alleged collusion between Russia, or Russians of one sort or another, and the Trump campaign,1 what has come out of the investigation so far does not have anything to do with that question. Obviously, nobody knows what might be coming or will be in the final report, but while we have seen some things involving Russia/Russians, we haven’t seen anything about collusion between Russia/Russians and the Trump campaign.

Shutdowns and Walls. How Will It End?

Cutting through all of the tweets, press conferences, and claims of outrage, the current partial government shutdown boils down to a simple problem.  President Trump would rather have a partial government shutdown than approve spending bills that do not include money for his “wall.”  He has promised his supporters that he would build a wall.  It was one of the main themes of his campaign, and he hasn’t been able to get it done.  From his viewpoint, he needs to do it.  He promised.

Democrats, on the other hand, would rather have a partial government shutdown than approve money to build President Trump’s wall.  They have pretty much promised their supporters that they will never approve money for a wall.  They feel they need to keep their promise.  Plus, they don’t want to give President Trump the political victory of getting money for his wall.