Hardliners

There isn’t much more to be said about President Trump’s recent appointments than that: future Director of the National Economic Council Alan Kudlow, National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are all harder line on trade, North Korea and Iran than their more “adult” predecessors. Ditto the new lawyers Trump is bringing in to the White House to protect himself from Special Counsel Mueller. Joe DiGenova is an attack dog, not serious legal practitioner. The only adult left is Secretary of Defense Mattis, whose days could be numbered, if only because Pompeo and Bolton will push him in directions he doesn’t want to go.

What can we, and the world, expect for the next year?

In a word: conflict. Even if Trump doesn’t follow Bolton’s advice to go to war against both Iran and Korea, the president is likely to pull the plug on the Iran nuclear deal and use his proposed meeting with Kim Jong-un to set up a casus belli. These moves will at the very least strain relations with US allies in Europe and Asia, reducing American influence on both continents and creating openings for Russia and China to fill vacuums there.

Trump has already precipitated sharp falls in the stock market with his announcement of aluminum and steel tariffs as well as his intention to impose tariffs on a broad range of Chinese goods. The tariffs, massive budget deficit, and tax cuts are all inflationary moves, on top of an economy that has been performing close to capacity pretty much since Barack Obama took office in 2009. The Fed will react by increasing interest rates to slow the economy and preempt inflation. The end of the long recovery from the 2008 financial crisis is in sight.

Tighten your seat belts one more notch. Trump is also likely to fire Special Counsel Mueller, who has clearly breached the President’s red line, drawn to protect himself from any inquiry into his finances. That’s where the crux of the Russia investigation lies: Trump’s real estate empire is highly dependent on hot Russian money, which Putin controls. That’s why Trump fears him. The legal team Trump is assembling is not one that could capably defend Trump in court or even prepare him for an interview with Mueller. The President thinks he is immune. His only defense will be offense.

On top of all this, three different women are going public with their stories of sexual encounters with Trump, Cambridge Analytica is facing accusations that it abused personal data and violated campaign finance laws (with some eyes wide shut from Facebook), and relations between the Trump campaign and the United Arab Emirates as well as the Russian intelligence service are coming into focus. Any one of these scandals would be headline news were it not for everything else going on. Distraction is one of Trump’s main tactics.

What does it all add up to? A sharp decline in American prestige and power has already begun: we are overspending on conventional military hardware in a period of cyber and other nonconventional threats, we are blowing up a thriving economy, we are risking two catastrophic wars, we are challenging trading and investment partners with a weak and ineffectual tariff attack, and Trump is embarrassing the country with salacious sexual, financial, and intelligence scandals.

Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi are laughing at a president who inflicts more damage on America than they could ever imagine doing. American allies are panicking. Trump is making America small again. His hardliners will now make things worse.