Let’s look back to January 24, 2017:
When Mr. Comey and the president-elect met at Trump Tower for the first time this month for an intelligence briefing, Mr. Trump told the F.B.I. director that he hoped he would remain in his position, according to people briefed on the matter. And Mr. Trump’s aides have made it clear to Mr. Comey that the president does not plan to ask him to leave, these people said.
If President Trump was really bothered by how FBI director James Comey handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s e-mails — and recall he praised the director’s decisions on the campaign trail last autumn — then the normal, sensible thing would have been to let Comey know there was an intention to make a change during the transition.
Even if Trump found himself disappointed with Comey’s performance once he was in the Oval Office, a normal administration gets their ducks in a row before making a big, dramatic step like this. The arguments and justification for the move are put in place and on paper. Talking points are distributed. Rumors often leak. Replacement names start to surface. A figure on his way out, like Comey, starts to read the handwriting on the wall. By the time the announcement is made, it’s almost old news; everyone’s had time to acclimate to the change.
.. Bloomberg was able to get additional cost estimates for more of those proposed energy infrastructure projects, and concluded that $50 billion in proposed projects are waiting for approval from FERC, which legally can’t approve anything until they get at least one more commissioner. They need three for a quorum, and have had only two since February; usually they have five. This is the first time in the agency’s history that it hasn’t had a quorum.
As I’ve written repeatedly, this is an embarrassment. These are big, privately funded infrastructure projects — mostly new pipelines, pressure-management stations and liquid-natural-gas terminals – that will create thousands of construction and operating jobs, both union and non-union, in places like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. These are exactly the sort of good-paying blue-collar construction and heavy-industry jobs that President Trump promised he would bring back to these places, that cost U.S. taxpayers nothing, and all of them were left collecting dust for a few months because the White House couldn’t get its act together and nominate new commissioners.
What Fans of The Handmaid’s Tale Prefer to Ignore
To picture a near-future United States that is a Christian theocracy with open, systematic, and brutal oppression of women, you have to picture some unbelievable changes occurring very quickly: repealing women’s right to vote; a re-acceptance of slavery; widespread Christian acceptance of government-mandated extramarital sexual intercourse; total repeal of the First Amendment; total bans on any other religious beliefs (there are references to “Baptist rebels”). Perhaps most absurdly, almost all men have accepted a regime where the only sexual outlet of any kind is government-monitored breeding with the fertile “handmaids,” reserved for the most powerful
Do you picture lots of American men signing on for asystem that denies them the freedom to have sex with women? You really have to have your “all men have fascist impulses just under their skin” blinders on tohear that and nod, “Oh, yeah, that could totally happen.”
But Margaret Atwood could have set her tale in other places and made it practically a modern-day documentary: say, Saudi Arabia. Or any corner ofTaliban-controlled Afghanistan.
.. Married women may not obtain a passport or travel outside the country without the written permission of their husbands.
.. Iran
.. The UN Children’s Rights Committee reported in March that the age of marriage for girls is 13, that sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine lunar years was not criminalized, and that judges had discretion torelease some perpetrators of so-called honor killings without any punishment. Child marriage—though not the norm—continues, as the law allows girls to marry at 13 and boys at age 15, as well as at younger ages if authorized by a judge. Authorities continue to prevent girls and women from attending certain sporting events, including men’s soccer and volleyball matches.
.. The world has plenty of awful places that can be fairly compared to Atwood’s fictional dystopian regime of Gilead. They’re just mostly Muslim.
Does This Administration Know What It Doesn’t Know?
.. Take a look at President Trump’s inner circle: Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Senior Counselor Steve Bannon, First Daughter Ivanka, First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, Chief Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, and Counselor Kellyanne Conway…
Only Pence has spent any significant time dealing with the federal government from the inside as aCongressman. Most of those figures have been around politics, but haven’t necessarily been around government. And obviously, Trump himself has never worked in government.
.. That’s my best explanation about how the administration could spend weeks trying to figure out how to fund and pass a massive infrastructure bill, while at the same time, at least $20 billion worth of big energy-infrastructure projects — 15 of them in 14 states, all 100 percent privately funded and all holding the potential to create thousands of new construction jobs — are sitting in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, awaiting approval. FERC can’t give approval until it has a quorum, which it has lacked since the beginning of February.
The blame can’t be put on the Senate for taking too long with the nominees; the administration hasn’t nominated anyone yet.
.. The administration has a big, public promise — rebuild America’s infrastructure! — and an easy way to get toit, by staffing up FERC and getting those projects approved. But they’re simply not getting around to it because… they’re just not on top of things.
.. So Trump said his assessment of NATO’s obsolescence was based on not knowing much about it, and now he knows more and feels NATO is improving.
Is Tillerson Being Sidelined by Jared Kushner?
Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, made a splash with a highly visible trip to Iraq on behalf of the White House, and is handling portfolios involving parts of U.S. policy toward China, the Middle East, and Mexico. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson looks increasingly marginalized.
.. he certainly appears not to have a front-row seat on many foreign-policy issues. He was absent at President Trump’s meetings with the leaders of Israel, Canada, and Japan, and he wasn’t consulted on Trump’s botched executive order restricting non-citizen entry to the U.S.
.. The White House overruled his pick of Elliott Abrams as the No. 2 man
.. When the conservative group Judicial Watch went into federal district court this month to seek the release of State Department documents relating to Hillary Clinton’s e-mail server, it was opposed by Richard Visek, an Obama holdover who is still the acting legal adviser at Foggy Bottom. “The State Department’s position is that we won’t get all the documents until 2020.
.. It’s also all too easy to concentrate foreign-policy decision making in the White House, the way Nixon did. “They really want to blow this place up,” one State Department official told the Atlantic in March. “I don’t think this administration thinks the State Department needs to exist. They think Jared [Kushner] can do everything.”
.. While Trump believes he can close deals with foreign leaders like no one else can, someone has to pave the way for those deals, and a State Department led by Trump appointees is the best bet to fill the role.
.. Blowing up bureaucratic agencies can be a good thing at times, but simply ignoring the fact that they exist is likely to be shortsighted and lead to unwanted surprises.
Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446520/rex-tillerson-state-department-being-marginalized-jared-kushner
How China’s President Could Bully Trump
Xi Jinping may take advantage of an inexperienced and untested American leader.
Khrushchev came away convinced not merely that Kennedy was all talk and no action, but that he didn’t have the spine to counter Soviet aggression.
Within months, Moscow had given orders to build the Berlin Wall, and U.S. and Soviet tanks faced each other across Checkpoint Charlie. The following year, Khrushchev sent nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles into Cuba, precipitating an American naval quarantine and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war.
.. Just as Khrushchev believed of his country, Xi apparently believes that time is on China’s side, despite clear evidence of mounting economic problems at home. And like their Soviet predecessors, today’s Chinese believe that American society is too soft to commit to a long-term competition around the globe.
.. Unlike Kennedy, however, Trump has given Xi reasons to believe he is not fully committed to America’s postwar role in the world. The second most famous line from Kennedy’s inaugural address proclaimed that America “would pay any price, bear any burden … support any friend and oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” By contrast, Trump declared in his that “from this moment on, it’s going to be America First.”.. Trump’s America First rhetoric alone might have encouraged Xi to see how far the president can be pushed; the wide swings in Trump’s policy toward China may embolden the Chinese leader even further. What started out as a surprisingly hard line against China during the campaign and transition into office has significantly softened in the two months since he took office, leading to charges that Trump has flip-flopped or caved to Chinese pressure. In the days leading up to the summit, the president again took a harder line... The one trade move that Trump did make—withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership—is a boon to Beijing’s efforts to forge its own Asian free trade agreement... get Trump himself to agree to Chinese formulations of Sino-U.S. relations as ones of “mutual respect,” meaning respecting core interests like Taiwan, or “win-win” cooperation, whereby difficult issues like cyberattacks are shelved.Such were the statements made by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on his recent trip to Beijing, which were eagerly trumpeted by the state-run press. If Trump mouthed the same phrases, it would give the appearance of a U.S. president essentially accepting China as an equal, if not dominant, power in Asia... he could declare an “air defense identification zone” over the South China Sea.. It would force Trump to respond—or seem to be acquiescing to the extension of China’s control in an area where multiple nations claim territorial rights... Xi could deploy fighter squadrons and anti-air and anti-ship missiles to other disputed islands. That would put China in a largely unassailable position in what is perhaps the world’s most vital waterway, and make American claims about protecting the high seas seem like empty proclamations... Xi could be even more convinced he can get away with some or all of these activities because the Trump administration is still largely bereft of high-ranking political appointees fit to make Asia policy... Two months into Trump’s term, no assistant secretary of defense or state for Asia has even been announced, let alone formally nominated.