When Donald Trump made his first run for President in 2012, I had no idea he had anything to do with Russia. I did not know his entire business career was based on fraud, although I may have suspected it at some level. I had no idea what his position on any issue was (other than birtherism) and took for granted that he had none. I regarded him a sort of a male Paris Hilton -- a playboy, mostly harmless, but absolutely useless, and an obvious disaster as President.
My reasons for being horrified at the thought of Trump as President had nothing to do with ideology or any particular issue. They were simple. The man was nothing but so much hot air. He knew nothing whatever about any issue and showed no sign of being willing or able to learn. He wouldn't know political or moral principle if it punched him in the nose. He had the attention span and impulse control of a small child. He had no concept of the public good as apart for his own private interests and, if elected, could be expected to regard the federal government as his own private property. He as an obvious authoritarian with no regard for the rule of law. Ross Perot inspired jokes about how shocked he would be when if found out the President could not fire Congress. Trump was so ignorant and so authoritarian that such things would not be jokes. But above all else, he was the sort of person who in case of crisis you would want his staff to handcuff him, stuff something in his mouth, and lock him in a closet until it blew over.
And yet here he is as President and nothing catastrophic has happened yet, except in Puerto Rico. The upshot of Woodward's shocking but not surprising book is that the reason is that his staff has restrained him. They have not gone so far as to physically restrain him (yet), but they have regularly stolen papers or engaged in delays or distractions in hopes that he would forget about the original insane project, and flat-out disobedience. Examples included:
- Withdrawing from the US-South Korea free trade pact (stolen paper)
- Withdrawing troops from South Korea (discussions)
- Invading Venezuela (numerous cases of talking him down)
- Starting a trade war with China (delays by Gary Cohn, begun now, after Cohn left)
- Cutting off all aid to Pakistan (discrete undermining)
- Large-scale intervention in Syria (a cross between disobedience and talking him down)
- Withdrawal from NAFTA (another stolen paper)
- Preemptive war against North Korea (at least discussed)
Giving credit where it is due, Trump's stopped clock has occasionally been right. Trump is impatient with the never-ending war in Afghanistan. And he recognized that his war of words with North Korea's Kim Jong-un was a man-to-man showdown and would not escalate. But the general impression is that we have avoided disaster because Trump's advisers have overruled their boss.
The New York Times anonymous editorial by an unnamed official described the general atmosphere, but is short on specifics. It says both that "We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous," and also that "[T]he president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic." So the author wants Trump to succeed and thinks that his policies have made America "safer and more prosperous," but that he is nonetheless "detrimental to the health of the republic"? The answer appears to be that the Administration has brought about "effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more," but that Trump's style makes it really difficult to get any of this done. As for specific actions in which the White House staff has thwarted their boss, the author mentions sanctions on Russia and expelling Russian diplomats.
This confirms the general impression in the other articles -- that Trump's staff have been thwarting him primarily in foreign policy and secondarily in foreign trade. If he has been thwarted in domestic policy, it has been by the failure to pass legislation in Congress (such as the repeal of Obamacare). But on the whole staffers are not interfering with Trump's domestic policy -- probably because they agree with it.
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