Donald Trump Presidency-Day One

[Tom1964]

Donald Trump looks very young in that photo. His hair is much darker and not the blonde look we see in the news videos.

[filghy2]

Donald Trump looks very young in that photo. His hair is much darker and not the blonde look we see in the news videos.

That photo must be about 30 years old, given Ivanka is now 37, so he would have been in his early 40s. I'm pretty sure Trump dies his hair, among other ridiculous things he does to it.

[Tom1964]

All politicians promise everything, but do they deliver? How is Donald Trump doing with creating jobs? What has he done and what hasn't he done so far? i would love to hear genuine comments as we don't hear a lot as im in UK. I also remember about a wall being built. Is that still happening? Whats the positives and negatives? Whats his views on tgirls?

[filghy2]

Where have you been the past 2 years Tom? If you haven't heard much about Trump then you must have been marooned on a desert island. I'm not American either, but there are almost as many stories about Trump in the media as there are about Australian politics - though granted we don't have any issues that match the Brexit debacle.

[trish]

He’s doing a TREMENDOUS job. He’s a TREMENDOUS president with TREMENDOUS ideas, a TREMENDOUS staff, a TREMENDOUS cabinet, a TREMENDOUS command of the English language and a commensurate vocabulary. Great, huge, bigly, thumbs up ... not to mention he's also an ignorant narcissist, a stupid pea brain, a bigoted, misogynistic, racist, and a compulsive liar.

[Stavros]

I don't think anyone is surprised that the Commander-in-Chief has declared victory over ISIS and intends to pull US forces out of Syria, and did so without first informing the Department of Defence, or State, or the National Security Adviser.

What we have not been told is whether or not Erdogan decided to squeeze the balls of the draft-dodging coward from Queens. Turkey fuming over the gruesome slaughter of Jamal Khasoggi (the Saudi butchers didn't even sedate the man before sawing off his limbs) has been dismayed by the defence of MBS by his boy in Washington, so they needed a deal.

How about Turkey let's the American continue to rake in the cash from his investments in the country while delivering the Kurds to Ankara? By pulling the US out of Syria, this is not just a victory for Syria, Russia and Iran, as well as the 14,000 or so ISIS fighters still there (their last operation came minutes before the President's victory tweet), it is a cruel blow to the Kurds who did most of the ground work to obliterate ISIS in Northern Syria.

just as Erdogan said of the Kurds "we will bury them in their ditches" so he turned to the American and said "and you can keep your towers and your cash" and the American smiled. After all, the whole point of the foreign policy of the USA is to put money in his pocket. You have to feel sorry for Michael Flynn, his Intel firm was so involved in Turkey and made him so much money but his business partner was allied to the Russians. He is heading off to prison in disgrace while the other guy polishes his arse on a golden chair in the Oval Office, mentally counting the day's profit.

And the Kurds? Wait and see.

[filghy2]

I don't think anyone is surprised that the Commander-in-Chief has declared victory over ISIS and intends to pull US forces out of Syria, and did so without first informing the Department of Defence, or State, or the National Security Adviser.

I'm a bit torn on this one. As always, you can query Trump's motivations and method and whether he's making a considered decision or just acting on impulse. On the other hand, there are good arguments that US interventions in the Middle East have generally done more harm than good and it may be better to cut your losses rather than continue is pursuit of some illusory victory. If you relied on the military's advice you could never get out because they will always argue that more troops are needed for longer to finish the job.

Like a stopped clock, Trump may be right occasionally, even if he is right for the wrong reasons.

[buttslinger]

Well, that's that.
Military Coup on Christmas Day?
Individual One in Bunker Mode?
Govt Shutdown?
Mueller pounces late February.
Who's going to want that Secretary of Defense job, Eric and Junior?
Is it still Thursday?
No, it's the second quarter of the Redskins/Bronco Superbowl. The role of Doug Williams will be played by Robert Mueller.


I guess we'll have to do our National Duty and start an Over/ Under pool of what day Trump will get the cuffs. Will he blubber???
You laffin' putin? Yer next!

[Stavros]

I'm a bit torn on this one. As always, you can query Trump's motivations and method and whether he's making a considered decision or just acting on impulse. On the other hand, there are good arguments that US interventions in the Middle East have generally done more harm than good and it may be better to cut your losses rather than continue is pursuit of some illusory victory. If you relied on the military's advice you could never get out because they will always argue that more troops are needed for longer to finish the job.

Like a stopped clock, Trump may be right occasionally, even if he is right for the wrong reasons.

You make some good points, although I think the Americans - and the British, assuming anyone right now is in control of policy- are damned if they do and damned if they don't.

i would suggest a good way to understand the dilemma is to contrast the structural with the conjunctural approaches to crisis, war and resolution.

The conjunctural presents the immediate case of intervention to change the course of a crisis, which may succeed or, as in Syria, draw the parties deeper into an internal conflict they do not own and cannot control. This has sometimes been known as 'mission creep' and prolongs the conflict until the political, military and financial costs become too great and a resolution is sought. The US has decided the political costs in Syria are greater than the benefit, but while a withdrawal benefits Syria, Russia and Iran they are now left with the burden of rebuilding Syria which in the Russian case appears to be a long term commitment to the security of Syria. It presents a dilemma for Israel which sees Syria as a threat but where the Russian presence is more significant than the Iranian.

israel and Russia are on speaking terms at least and there may be an agreement to curtail Iranian influence though one cannot rule out mischief making for the sake of it, just to remind Israel it too must exercise restraint. However, the rebuilding of Syria if it takes place will require 10 years of relative peace and there is no conclusion yet to the conflict with Daesh and al-Qaeda, or an agreement with the Syrian opposition to formally end the war and move to the next stage. On this basis the US has weakened its position by absenting itself from any political resolution to the Syrian conflict, just as it fled Iraq once the first post-Saddam government was elected, though the effect was to boost Iranian influence there.

if you compare the conjunctural to the structural you notice the difference, one good the other bad. The positive example is the allied takeover of Germany in 1945 which divided the country in two but led to a new state formation that was created in the West through a total commitment that was political, financial and also social, if the de-Nazificatiom process is seen that way. There was no independent German government until 1949, in the interim West Germany was in effect run by the US, Britain and France with the NATO alliance forming an important umbrella that rehabilitated a West Germany into the international system- the Saarland remained under French sovereignty until 1957 and the Federal Republic joined the UN in 1973.

The structural approach thus involves a party that intervened in a conflict seeing it through to the end of the military phase, then taking over or even creating a state apparatus, considered necessary in the case of Germany because Hitler had destroyed its previous formation. However, while reconstruction happened in Japan, the US controlling Japanese politics and the economy until 1952, they left the Monarchy intact, and neutralised the military which was absorbed into an American Asian defence strategy linked with Korea and Taiwan.

But clearly the structural approach is hugely expensive and time consuming, and the powers have not repeated it since.

The negative example of the structural approach is found with the Anglo-French division of the Middle East after the war in 1918. Creating new states against the will of the people, subordinating the region, in Britain's case, to its strategic interests in India, or exploiting local resources -oil in Iraq from the late 1920s- the reconstruction of the Middle East created new problems rather than resolving those that existed when the Ottomam Empire joined the war on the German side in 1914, and lost.

It is about commitment, but also empathy with the fallen- it was easier to rebuild Germany, there were ties and relationships based on shared values. The Arabs never enjoyed that relationship of equality, simply because as Arabs they were deemed to be inferior people, a view in 1914 that remains central to the contemporary problems that appear to have no solution today, and where after one hundred years of intervention thete is a sense that nothing has been learned, and the same mistakes are made again, and again.

But, as Mother Courage knew, war is profitable for enough people to keel it going.

[broncofan]

Michael Cohen was convicted of tax fraud and of lying to Congress. He lied to Congress about when he stopped communicating with Russian officials to develop Trump Tower Moscow. He now claims that Trump instructed him to lie to Congress which is obstruction of justice. Everyone (ie. lawyers, constitutional scholars including previous holdouts) agrees that obstruction of justice that takes this form is always impeachable.

It remains to be seen what corroborating evidence there is of Trump instructing Cohen. If it is just Cohen's word and not something in the cache of other communications Mueller likely has, Republicans can and probably will refuse to take the word of a convicted perjurer. We're going to find out in the coming weeks/months what it is that corroborates this if anything.