Patriotic Americans shouldn’t tolerate it
Jared Kushner can’t get a top secret security clearance? That was obvious long ago. His real estate empire leaves him open to undue influence, especially by China and Russia. He apparently compounded the problem by discussing his personal business during official government contacts with foreigners and by failing to report at least some of those his high-level contacts. No one should be surprised: Kushner has made it clear from the first that he believes the normal rules don’t apply to him, hence his failure to fill out his security forms fully and accurately.
But the same is true for his father-in-law. Donald Trump never had to fill out the security forms, but that doesn’t change the obvious: his far-flung business empire leaves him open to undue influence as well, not just by China and Russia. Witness the tug-of-war his minions are involved with in Panama. He, too, believes the normal rules don’t apply, hence his failure to separate himself from his businesses and his use of his family in official roles that don’t require Senate confirmation.
We can’t expect National Security Adviser McMaster and White House Chief of Staff Kelly to take on the President the way they did Kushner, but they need to try to mitigate Trump’s serious exposure to foreign leverage over his decisions.
McMaster is trying to do this by installing an orderly decision-making process, one that has been so successful it has opened wide gaps between what the US government is actually doing and what the President is saying and tweeting. Hence the effort in eastern Syria to stabilize the region US troops and their allies control, despite the President’s explicit disavowal of nationbuilding. Likewise the mixed signals on North Korea: while the President threatens fire and fury, the State Department is pursuing negotiations. Or the decision to send lethal, albeit defensive, arms to Ukraine, despite Russian objections and Trump’s own disinclination.
Kelly is also trying to install a more orderly process and has succeeded in ousting some of the worst of Trump’s staff. But his own views are so dramatically right-wing that he at the same time encourages the worst of Trump’s instincts on limiting immigration, reducing refugee resettlement, and minimizing the response to a groundswell of popular sentiment in favor of gun safety measures.
Nothing can save Trump from himself. He has still not criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 election or ordered the US government to respond with either defensive or offensive measures. He is trying to channel the gun debate into a ridiculous discussion of arming teachers, a proposition that at best will be adopted in a few more communities and at worst will lead to more deaths in school gun battles. Trump is trying to dismantle Obamacare piece by piece, rather than in one fell swoop, an effort that will hurt more people in the states he won than elsewhere. His one clear victory in Congress is a tax cut bill that benefits the rich far more than anyone else and a bipartisan spending compromise that ends any Republican claim to fiscal restraint.
Special Counsel Mueller has now indicted and even gotten guilty pleas from people only one degree of separation from the President. Several of these people were deeply enmeshed in Russian money, as is the President himself. No, nothing has been proven yet against him personally, but it defies logic to imagine that he has also not been subjected to Russian influence. He publicly welcomed Russian help during the campaign (in obtaining Hillary Clinton’s emails), as his son did in private. Seeking or receiving such help is illegal. I’ve said it before: he is either a dupe or an agent. It is hard for me to understand how any patriotic American would tolerate it.
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Except for his personal future, it almost doesn’t matter whether it’s dupe or agent. Although his behavior on learning last Election Night that he had actually won – panic – suggests that the realization that he was actually going to have to come through on promises he’d made under duress suggests the latter. This would account for his total failure to do anything about hardening the system against Russian meddling in this year’s elections, among other – “non-traditional” – activities. As for the elections, it would be instructive if he could be made to wonder if the Russians have decided to favor the Democrats this time, as a way of confusing the trail back to them, regardless of the effect on him of a Democratic majority large enough to impeach his expendable self. Surely he doesn’t think Putin feels any loyalty to a useful idiot?