From Singapore to Helsinki: It's All Downhill
At press time the most handsome, popular, powerful, deals-avvy, master negotiator and stable genius in the history of the world it seems is all a'twitter. Again.
In the latest of his regular 3 AM ponder, pout and posture routines "President" Putin's openly acknowledged choice for President of the United States has decided to poke the Iranians, tweeting at their leader, in all caps, like the mature nine-year-old one would hope he might still grow up to be.
Matt Drudge, ever the epitome of calm, cool, calculating analysis and restraint, described the incident as nothing less than the dropping of the: "TRUMP TWEET BOMB."
Trump, it seems, had dispatched an all-caps tweet in the general direction of Iranian President Rouhani, making it eloquently clear that one does not tug on Superman's cape. Or, to be precise:
"NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE."
Supporters of the President are already spinning out the notion that threatening a hot war against Iran is analogous to threatening a hot war against North Korea. It's a plausible idea, given what they clearly believe was the well-thought-out and professionally executed Presidential Plan: the shuffle before the deal, so to speak. The question, of course, is to WHICH President, ours or Russia's, belonged the plan.
Vladimir Putin can only have smiled as Trump, in five weeks, managed to alienate some of our most important allies while kowtowing to some of our (and their) most significant adversaries.
At the G-7, NATO, and in Great Britain, our boy ostensibly prepped for war with a combination of ill-conceived behavior accented by worse manners.
His made abundantly clear his preference for the company and inclination toward the repressive policies of authoritarian countries and their leaders.
If good fortune is marked by the intersection of opportunity and preparation, Trump took every opportunity not to be prepared.
His two "summits" were entered without agenda and he left both without any tangible results for OUR side.
North Korea's Kim could only have been delighted at being treated as an equal in exchange for a signature on a meaningless piece of paper.
Putin and his pals looked on with openly expressed glee throughout Trump's tour of shame, culminating with open and repeated and public agreement with Putin in denial of Russia's role in both obvious theft and deliberate election meddling.
And the trade wars have just begun.
Some, Republicans among them, have already dared call it treason.
Others argue that Treason requires both wit and a plan.
And all the while, the likes of golf, mistresses, anthem singing, and re-painting Air Force One dance in his head, as Trump presides (often by not presiding) over and attempted evisceration of all the institutions designed to preserve, protect and defend our constitutional democracy, its citizens, and the land in which they live.
Why? Apparently, we are well on our way to knowing. Our guess is that money is the key, and that bad deals, massive debt, desperate money-laundering, tax evasion, and other high crimes and misdemeanors, documented and in some cased audio-recorded will be, in the end, this President's undoing.
The key for the country is to survive the interim.