A jab at Reagan?
Donald Trump once spent nearly $100,000 to place a full-page advertisement criticizing U.S. foreign policy in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe.
“There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure,” the ad’s headline blares. Below, the reader finds “an open letter from Donald J. Trump” — addressed “To The American People” — “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves.”
.. “For decades, Japan and other nations have been taking advantage of the United States,” the letter declares. “The saga continues unabated as we defend the Persian Gulf, an area of only marginal significance to the United States for its oil supplies, but one upon which Japan and others are almost totally dependent.”
“Why are these nations not paying the United States for the human lives and billions of dollars we are losing to protect their interests?” the ad continues.
“The world is laughing at America’s politicians as we protect ships we don’t own, carrying oil we don’t need, destined for allies who won’t help.”
.. Trump writes that Americans could “help our farmers, our sick, our homeless by taking from some of the greatest profit machines ever created — machines created and nurtured by us.”
“‘Tax’ these wealthy nations, not America,” suggests the tycoon. “End our huge deficits, reduce our taxes, and let America’s economy grow unencumbered by the cost of defending those who can easily afford to pay us for the defense of their freedom.”
“Let’s not let our great country be laughed at any more,” Trump’s letter concludes.
.. At the time the ad ran, there was speculation that Trump might oppose George H.W. Bush for the Republican nomination for president. The same day the ads ran, an article elsewhere in the Times reported that the developer had scheduled a trip to New Hampshire.
The First Porn President
He actually took time out from showing Stormy a picture of himself on the cover of a magazine, according to her interview in In Touch Weekly, to ask her about her own work in the porn industry.
“He was very curious,” she said. “Not necessarily about the sex or anything like that, but business questions.” Like how much she made off royalties from the movies.
.. When she asked what was up with his hair, he laughed with her about it. He gave her his ultimate compliment, comparing her to Ivanka. And he didn’t ask to do anything kinky.
.. Oddly, for such a germaphobe, he did not use a condom, she said.
.. The Stormy episode is exactly the kind of embarrassing episode that Trump wiggled out of for decades, denying that he knew women who accused him, playing the legal and media angles to kill stories, getting the help of friends and employees to pay off women.
But times have dramatically changed, post-Weinstein.
.. The White House will keep trying to dismiss Daniels as she is on her “Make America Horny Again” tour, but she’s not going away. As Muddy Waters famously sang the blues, “They call it stormy Monday, but Tuesday’s just as bad; Wednesday’s worse, and Thursday’s also sad.”
Trump Shows Us the Way
Donald Trump slipped into the Oval Office through a wormhole of confusion about the American identity.
.. We were moving from a white-majority, male-dominated country and manufacturing base to a multicultural, multilateral, globalized, P.C., new energy, new technology world, without taking account of the confusion and anger of older Americans who felt like strangers in a strange land.
.. And we certainly don’t want men like Rob Porter who have punched, kicked, choked and terrorized their wives to be in the president’s inner circle, helping decide which policies, including those that affect women, get emphasized.
.. We don’t want the White House chief of staff to be the sort of person who shields and defends abusers — and then dissembles about it — simply because the abuser is a rare competent staffer. Or a man who labels Dreamers “too lazy to get off their asses” simply because they didn’t apply for legal protections in time.
.. John Kelly served as a character witness not only for Porter, after he didn’t receive security clearance because F.B.I. agents had heard the harrowing tales from his battered ex-wives. Kelly also testified as a character witness for Gen. Robert E. Lee and a former Marine who pleaded guilty to sending inappropriate sexual messages to female subordinates; who drove drunk to an arraignment; and who got charged in Virginia with sex crimes against children.
.. As a more lucid Trump tweeted in 2012 about Rihanna getting back together with Chris Brown, “A beater is always a beater.”
.. We don’t want a president who bends over backward to give the benefit of the doubt to neo-Nazis, wife beaters, pedophiles and sexual predators — or who is a sexual predator himself.
.. We don’t want a president who flips the ordinary equation, out of some puerile sense of grievance, to honor Russia and dishonor the F.B.I.
.. We don’t want a president who is too shallow to read his daily intelligence report and too obsessed with the deep state to deal fairly with our intelligence agencies.
.. We don’t want a president who suggests that Democrats who don’t clap for him are treasonous and who seems more enthralled by authoritarian ways than democratic ones.
.. who loves generals but trashes Gold Star parents
.. who wants the sort of chesty military parade that we mock Kim Jong-un for, a phallic demonstration of overcompensation that would only put more potholes in the D.C. boulevards.
.. one who could be so easily trapped in lies that he can’t even be allowed to talk to an investigator.
.. And, finally, we surely don’t want a president who seeks advice on foreign affairs from Henry Kissinger. Ever. Again.
Release the Memo That Really Matters
Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to “declare war.”
.. In practice, however, it seems as if the rule is observed mainly in the breach. In the post–World War II era, American forces have been committed time and again even in offensive military actions without even the slightest effort to obtain congressional authorization.
.. The latest example occurred on April 6, 2017, when President Trump ordered a cruise missile strike on Syria in retaliation for its use of chemical weapons
.. Unless there is classified information we don’t yet know, a strike of this nature is exactly the kind of military action that should require congressional approval.
.. We were not at war with Syria. We were not acting in immediate self-defense of our nation. We were not fulfilling a Senate-ratified treaty obligation.
.. Shrugging off the Constitution is a bipartisan practice.
- Who can forget President Obama’s strikes against Libya? He ordered offensive military action against a sovereign nation without a declaration of war.
- While George W. Bush obtained congressional authorization for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, his predecessor,
- Bill Clinton, launched extended aerial campaigns in the former Yugoslavia with no congressional vote.
years of presidential overreach, congressional inaction, and partisan bickering have jeopardized our constitutional structure. We are steadily moving away from the separation of powers and toward an unconstitutional legal regime that places sole war-making authority in the hands of an increasingly imperial presidency.
.. There are widespread reports that the president is considering launching a “bloody nose” strike against North Korea — a strike designed to send the strongest possible message, short of all-out war — that its ICBM program has to end.
.. The discussions are apparently so serious that the administration pulled its nominee for ambassador to South Korea, Victor Cha, because he opposed the strike. He then immediately took to the pages of the Washington Post to express his opposition
.. We are not facing the necessity of immediate self-defense. Oh, and in both countries, military action carries with it risks of dangerous escalation. With Russian boots on the ground in Syria, miscalculation risks a great-power conflict. With immense North Korean forces clustered near the border of South Korea, miscalculation risks a truly terrible war.
.. New military action in Syria and new military action in North Korea represent textbook cases for congressional authorization.
.. So why did the administration feel that it had the legal authority to order its Syria strike?
Well, it turns out there’s a memo.
.. Prior to the Syria strike, the administration generated a classified document by an “interagency group of attorneys” that analyzed the “legal basis for potential military action.”
.. We cannot sustain and protect our constitutional structure if we delegate arguments against the unconstitutional abuse of presidential authority exclusively to members of whichever party is out of power.
.. it’s time for Senator Corker to insist on a public debate and congressional authorization before we launch any new military action against North Korea.
.. While the facts supporting the argument may well be legitimately classified, the legal analysis itself — which will turn on questions of constitutional, statutory, and international law — should be a matter of open inquiry.