What the fuck have you done?
Egyptian physician and comedian Bassem Yousseff MC-ed the Middle East Institute’s annual conference dinner Tuesday evening. He asked two things about the election that have stuck with me:
- America: what the fuck have you done?
- How come your campaigns cost a lot of money? In the Middle East, assholes are free.
We are now in a position to begin to answer the first question. President-elect Trump’s initial nominations, with the exception of Republican National Committee Chair and now Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, all come from the racist, Muslim-bashing fringe of America First politics:
- Chief Strategist Steve Bannon is the editor of the alt_right scandal website turned Trump cheerleader Breitbart News;
- National Security Adviser Michael Flynn is an anti-Muslim ideologue who says Barack Obama invented the Islamic State;
- Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions has expressed disregard for the NAACP as “un-American,” opposes same-sex marriage, abortion and Obamacare, and supports unfettered gun rights.
- CIA Director nominee Michael Pompeo thinks Muslims have to denounce terrorist acts, or else and held Hillary Clinton culpable in the Benghazi incident that killed the American Ambassador, even though the Republican-controlled committee reached the opposite conclusion.
So far, what America has done is to bring to power fringe right-wingers with little regard for civil rights or constitutional protection, except when it comes to carrying a loaded gun. There are rumors Trump might choose Mitt Romney as Secretary of State and David Petraeus as Secretary of Defense, neither of whom belong to this racist fringe, but we’ll have to wait and see about that. It might no make much difference with these initial appointments in place.
Assholes aren’t free in the US, but they apparently cost far less than Hillary Clinton:
That’s arguably worse than embarrassing. How do you spend that much more than Trump and still lose Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania?
The short answer is that you fail to turn out minorities and you lose white working class votes, including women. You pile up almost as many votes as Barack Obama did and win over Trump by well over 1.4 million, but they came mainly in the northeast and on the West Coast. That causes you to fail in the electoral college, where smaller and more rural states have added weight.
What are the implications for foreign policy?
Some of the sharp edges will get smoothed down. The United States isn’t ditching NATO or tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, since even an asshole would recognize we are better off with them than without them. If I am wrong about that, we are in not only for a rough ride but a potentially catastrophic one.
But other promises will need to be fulfilled. I expect the wall on the border with Mexico to be built, even though more Mexicans are leaving the US than arriving. I expect an end to accepting Syrian refugees, even though they are already undergoing “extreme vetting.” The proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership is dead, leaving the initiative on trade in Asia to the Chinese. Ditto the Paris climate change agreement, unless Trump reverts to his 2009 position in favor of vigorous action on greenhouse gases (not going to happen):
Trump will certainly attempt to reach an understanding with Russia on Syria and Ukraine, but he will only succeed if he is willing to offer Moscow more than Obama did. That will anger not only many Democrats but also many Republicans, most notably John McCain.
It will be much harder to get rid of refugees or undocumented immigrants who are already in the US, since they have rights to “due process” (even Melania Trump, who apparently worked illegally in the US). It will also be difficult to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement, which has boosted US exports and created a mutual dependency that would be expensive and complicated to unravel.
In the end, I suspect the biggest international damage from appointing people like Bannon, Flynn, Sessions, and Pompeo is to America’s reputation abroad and to the liberal democratic model that has been so important for the last 70-odd years. It doesn’t really matter whether Trump himself is a racist or anti-Muslim. His appointments speak louder than anything he can say. The right response is this, from the cast of Hamilton last night:
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He wants an apology?? (for the Hamilton cast appeal/challenge.) Who does he think he is, the boss nobody dares to rile? He’s the hired help these days. Lifelong retraining (briefing books every night – no more just repeating the same applause lines over and over), more work, less pay. No chance of tenure. Welcome to the world your employees know.