Even Trump’s Staff Doesn’t Trust Him on National Security
On This Day In 2020
(We’ve been asked what we thought about the debate. In addition to Thursday’s bonus post, we’ll answer via today’s OTDI)
“In hundreds of highly classified phone calls with foreign heads of state, President Donald Trump was so consistently unprepared for discussion of serious issues…and so abusive to leaders of America’s principal allies, that… some senior US officials …(grew convinced) that the President himself posed a danger to the national security of the United States.”
That’s the intro to a piece by famed Pulitzer-winning journalist Carl Bernstein OTDI 2020.
Say what you will about Biden’s performance, but, as far as we know, nobody has accused him of having these types of mental defects which threaten the United States. Revelations like these about Trump, though, have persistently been leaked for many years, and Trump’s abilities would only be worse now if he again gains access to the White House telephones. Every political figure on the scene today -- of both parties -- would be a substantially better choice for November than Donald Trump.
More details from Bernstein:
Trump’s calls “caused former top Trump deputies – including national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly… to conclude that the President was often “delusional” … The sources said there was little evidence that the President became more skillful or competent in his telephone conversations with most heads of state over time. Rather, he continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest.”
For example: "Two sources described the President as woefully uninformed about the history of the Syrian conflict and the Middle East generally, and said he was often caught off guard, and lacked sufficient knowledge to engage on equal terms in nuanced policy discussion with Erdogan. “Erdogan took him to the cleaners,” said one of the sources. The sources said that deleterious US policy decisions on Syria...were directly linked to Erdogan’s ability to get his way with Trump on the phone calls."
Women in particular were Trump’s targets for savagery. Bernstein noted: “…his most vicious attacks, said the sources, were aimed at women heads of state….The President demeaned and denigrated them in diatribes described as “near-sadistic” by one of the sources and confirmed by others. “Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: he called her ‘stupid,’ and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians … He’s toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with.”
Well, um…at least Trump didn’t try scare Angela Merkel with a big dog, like Putin did.
(Btw, yesterday we talked about Trump's habit of "projecting" his sins onto others. In the debate, he said he would be strong and will solve intractable world problems even before taking office. Three comments: 1) That's projection; he's lying because as we see here it is HE who gets suckered when negotiating with world leaders; 2) His staff got convicted for meddling in foreign affairs before he took office in '17; doesn't he ever learn? 3) Last time, he promised us he was so tough that Mexico would pay for his wall. Remind us, how much did they end up paying us? Ah, $0.)
Dive Deeper
Full read of Carl Bernstein’s article on CNN
Putin denies trying to scare Angela Merkel with a dog, reported by CNN
Pic: Larry D. Moore