A Weekend Trump Dump

I'm not sure which I'm getting more tired of: People who are sure Donald Trump will win a second term or people who are sure he won't. One group will see their expected outcome but I think the "being sure" part is foolish.

This is such an unconventional, volatile presidency that I wouldn't wager he'll even be president by my birthday, which is next March. You know what I do feel certain of? That the current Ukraine mess won't drive him from the White House but that there will be more scandals of equal or greater magnitude that will emerge before Election Day…probably many more if/when some arm of government gets its mitts on his tax records. There was a time we never thought Nixon supporters would abandon him but eventually, it looked like he'd bring down his entire party…and they did.

Here are a few articles worth reading, starting with Daniel Larison, who notes that for all his self-promoted rep as a "great negotiator," Trump has done nothing in the area of foreign relations but fail, fail, fail. Here's an excerpt in case you're too feeble to click on the link…

He has no respect for diplomacy, and he doesn't understand how diplomacy works, so it is not surprising that he is so bad at it. Instead of securing new agreements, he has squandered a real opportunity with North Korea, and he has deliberately stoked tensions with Iran. He foolishly took ownership of a regime change effort in Venezuela that has yielded nothing but more suffering for people in Venezuela. For all of his empty blather about building a better relationship with Russia, he has scuttled one arms control treaty with Moscow and seems determined to scrap New START as well. His signature move of reneging on agreements in an attempt to force more concessions from other parties has consistently backfired and left the U.S. in a worse position than when he started. Trump has shown that he can burn down the diplomatic achievements of others, but all that the U.S. has to show for his efforts is ashes and smoke.

Meanwhile, as Republicans come up with new explanations of how Trump did nothing wrong vis-à-vis Ukraine, William Saletan keeps pointing out how these explanations are themselves damning to the guy in the Oval Office. The new justification for his actions is that Ukraine was out to bring him down. And how were they doing that? By cooperating with legitimate U.S. investigations of the Trump administration. Quote…

The revenge theory starts with a May 23 meeting at the White House. A delegation of Trump appointees and a Republican senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, had just returned from Ukraine. They told Trump that Zelensky, who had just been inaugurated, was launching an unprecedented campaign against corruption. If Trump had cared about corruption, the delegation's report would have moved him. It didn't. He fixated instead on the idea that Ukraine was out to get him.

Lastly, Rudy Giuliani may have stopped inflicting friendly-fire damage on his client Donald Trump by staying off TV talk shows but "America's Mayor" still has a Twitter account. As Aaron Rupar notes, the Bizarro version of Perry Mason is doing Trump damage with his latest tweets. Lovely.