“A fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool,” this Shakespeare quote came to mind while reading Carl Bernstein’s latest expose’ on Trump’s phone call with foreign leaders.
It paints a damning portrait of a president who is too ignorant of American foreign policy but too proud to admit it. A president whose ignorance and ego are exploited by the world’s ‘strongmen’–which he cozies up to while shunning allies. And a White House, freaking out after coming to the realization that the president is an existential threat to the country.
Trump and Putin
Bernstein said in his report that officials in the Trump administration were concerned about Trump’s phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin, particularly, Trump’s deference to the Russian leader. This is not new information but Bernstein’s report expanded on previous reports and provide new details, revealing another layer of Trump and Putin’s deeply disturbing relationship. Sources told Bernstein that Trump was “almost never prepared substantively” for a call with Putin and so he was susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways by the former KGB agent. One official went as far as to compare Putin to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an occasional player of checkers. Putin just “outplays” him the official said.
Trump’s relationship with Putin has been normalized to a point where it has become fodder for the punditry class or as a dismissive attack line from Democrats. We seem to have forgotten that a US president—a sitting US president cozying up to the leader of a country who remains the greatest threat to America’s interest in Europe and a threat to our democracy in the US, is not normal. Trump’s relationship with Putin is of utmost importance now, after various news outlets report that he may have been briefed earlier this year on Russia’s plan to place bounties on US troops in Afghanistan and did nothing. Bounties that the Washington Post reports are believed to have resulted in the death of multiple troops.
Trump and Erdogan
Another bombshell in Bernstein’s report was the ease at which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan could directly contact Donald Trump. Trump spoke with Erdogan more times than he actually spoke any other world leader, including our allies. He was so accommodating of Erdogan that he would speak to the Turkish president at least twice per week, “his calls were put through directly to the President on standing orders from Trump”.
Erdogan was more than happy to take advantage of Trump’s naivete’ about the conflict in Syria or general Middle East policy to get exactly what he wanted. Sources told Bernstein that Trump’s decision to abandon our Kurdish allies to be slaughtered by Turkish forces was a direct result of Erdogan’s ability to get what he wanted from Trump during their phone calls.
Trump and our allies
Trump reserved his harshest critiques for some of our closet allies, especially female heads of states. His diatribes demeaning the women were “near-sadistic”. He called German Chancellor Angela Merkel, “stupid.” Merkel was actually awarded a doctorate for her thesis on quantum chemistry in 1986. The highlight of Trump’s year in 1986 was posing with NYC’s park commissioner with a pair of skates and appearing as a guest on late-night TV shows.
Merkel appeared unaffected by Trump’s insults and usually counter with facts. Then British Prime Minister Theresa May though was not as unbothered. She became “flustered and nervous” and was clearly intimated by Trump, who called her a “fool” for her handling of the whole Brexit saga among other issues.
The main takeaway from Bernstein’s report is that people around Trump including some of his closest advisors see him as a threat to the country’s national security. But instead of speaking up, they choose to remain as an anonymous source, trying to calm our fears by appearing to signal that there are actual adults in the room, despite failing to control some of this president’s worst impulses for the past three and a half years.
