Expert journalism from South Korea - Donald Trump's chaos foreign policy

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2019/jul/11/who-believes-the-presidents-crazy-stories/

Who believes the president’s crazy stories? By Donald Kirk

Seoul, South Korea

Sometimes you have to wonder why Donald Trump spins so many untruths and half-truths and why or whether he thinks he can simply get away with that stuff forever.

That’s why a couple of his recent boasts seemed so unnecessary, so easily questioned, so pointless. The one I liked most was his claim that we would have been at war right now if Barack Obama’s stay in the White House had been extended or if someone like Obama had been elected. That was a jibe against not only Obama but also Hillary Clinton, who would probably have been reasonably firm about North That’s why a couple of his recent boasts seemed so unnecessary, so easily questioned, so pointless. The one I liked most was his claim that we would have been at war right now if Barack Obama’s stay in the White House had been extended or if someone like Obama had been elected. 

That was a jibe against not only Obama but also Hillary Clinton, who would probably have been reasonably firm about North Korea.

At least twice I heard him say that the Korean standoff had been “a fiery mess” when he took over from Obama — indeed, “We would have been at war with North Korea.” In nearly two and a half years as president, he boasted, “We have had peace.”

It’s very difficult to disprove a hypothetical. One cannot say for sure that we would not have been at war, though I seriously doubt it. It was Trump’s reference to “a fiery mess,” though, that seemed especially noteworthy. Who was it who was threatening “fire and fury” before the U.N. Security Council in 2017? And who was adding to the fury by calling Kim Jong Un “little rocket man”?

In fact, we were far from going to war under Obama. It was in the first year of Trump’s presidency that tensions escalated crazily and war clouds seemed visible on the horizon. That year, 2017, after Trump’s inauguration in January, Kim ordered multiple tests of nuclear warheads and long-range missiles. The U.S. countered by military exercises in which special forces, Navy SEALs and Marines staged mock assassination raids on the North Korean leader in annual war games.

Even so, nobody quite thought war was about to break out in 2017. We are so accustomed to mini-crises and near-crises that it’s hard to convince folks, Korean or foreigner, that we should rush to the bomb shelters or get out of the country on the next plane.

Trump himself that year did his best to fan the flames. I attended one memorable speech that he gave at the National Assembly in Seoul in November 2017 in which he declared, “North Korea is a country ruled as a cult.” At the center: “a deranged belief in the leader’s destiny to rule as parent-protector over a conquered Korean peninsula and an enslaved Korean people.”

Strong stuff — and it got better as Trump warmed to the topic. “The regime has pursued nuclear weapons with the deluded hope that it could blackmail its way to the ultimate objective,” he orated. “That objective we are not going to let it have.”

South Korea, he told Assembly members, “will never allow what’s going on in North Korea to continue to happen.” Why? “The North Korean regime has pursued its nuclear and ballistic missile programs in defiance of every assurance, agreement and commitment it has made to the United States and its allies.”

You have to believe Kim Jong Un must be familiar with every accusation Trump made. Maybe that’s why he decided it was time to try a little reconciliation, beginning by sending a team to the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February 2018. 

Simultaneously, he stressed his “byungjin” policy on the need for economic as well as military-nuclear prowess.

Which brings us to the next overstatement — flat-out nonsense that Obama “wanted to meet, and Chairman Kim would not meet him,” and “the Obama administration was begging for a meeting, they were begging for meetings constantly.”

Initially, I wondered if some secret messages had been ricocheting back and forth. I had never heard of such goings-on, but you never know. By now, however, I’ve seen enough denials from the likes of Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, and James Clapper, his director of national intelligence, to be sure there’s nothing whatsoever to this claim.

So why does Trump bother to make up stories? How do such foolish fabrications advance the cause of anything? One answer may be that he’s hiding under a cloud of falsehoods to cover up the danger of falling for the blackmail of which he accused North Korea.

It’s because Kim has so effectively wielded the nuclear club that Trump pleaded with him to agree to more talks between negotiators. Perfect. Now Kim can go on demanding what he’s been demanding all along — an end to sanctions, maybe a “peace treaty,” a year and seven months after Trump vowed, right here in Seoul, “We will not permit America or our allies to be blackmailed or attacked.”

Donald Kirk has been a columnist for the Korea Times and South China Morning Post, among other newspapers and magazines. 

He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

Emergency is Trumpzism- echo

Ten Republican Senators will likely break with Donald Trump on the declaration of a non-emergency border wall.

We have a national emergency, all right- it's Donald Trump

By Eugene Robinson a columnist for The Washington Post published in the Las Vegas Sun

Our nation's national emergency’s name is Donald Trump, and it is a force of mindless, pointless disruption.

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Donald Trump's crazy pointy border wall - surely there will be impaled immigrants who will undoubtedly try to climb over this evil wall.

Donald Trump's crazy signature is the mark of a weirdly deranged man.

Donald Trump's stupid decision to officially declare a border wall emergency — to pretend to build an un-buildable border wall — is not just an act of constitutional vandalism. It is also an act of cowardice, a way to avoid the wrath of the far-right commentariat.

It is an end-run around Congress and, as such, constitutes a violation of his oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” — which gives Congress, not the president, the authority to decide how public money is spent. It does not give Trump the right to fund projects that Congress will not approve. Authoritarian leaders do that sort of thing. The puffed-up wannabe strongman now living in the White House is giving it a try.

Let’s be clear: There is no emergency. Arrests for illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border peaked in 2000, nearly two decades ago, at more than 1.5 million a year. They declined sharply under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama and, in 2017, were at their lowest point since 1971. In 2018, apprehensions ticked up slightly — but still barely climbed above 400,000

There has been an increase in families presenting themselves at legal points of entry to seek asylum — those groups of bedraggled desperate Central Americans that Trump calls “caravans.” 

Under U.S. and international law, these people have right to ask for asylum and have their cases evaluated. Again, they come to legal border crossings to seek admission. Only a literal handful try to navigate the forbidding rural terrain where Trump says he wants to build a wall.

What the administration really needs to do is expand and improve facilities for processing, caring for and, when necessary, housing these asylum seekers. But Trump doesn’t care about doing the right thing, or even the necessary thing. He cares only about being able to claim he is following through on his vicious anti-immigration rhetoric, which brands Mexican would-be migrants as “rapists” and Central Americans as members of the MS-13 street gang.

Trump had two years in which Republicans controlled both the House and the Senate — and could not convince Congress to give him funding for a wall. He decided to make it an issue only after Democrats won the power to say no. The president’s negotiating strategy — pitching tantrums, walking away from the table, venting on Twitter, provoking the longest partial government shutdown in history — was never going to work. You might think he’d have learned something about how Washington works by now, but you would be wrong.

Since there obviously is no legitimate emergency, Trump’s declaration — and the shifting of resources from duly authorized projects to the wall — will surely be challenged in court. It is possible, if not likely, that any actual construction will be held up indefinitely.

Indeed, legal briefs arguing against Trump’s action practically write themselves. An emergency, by definition, is urgent. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, for example, were clearly qualified as a national emergency. But Trump has been talking about issuing an emergency declaration to build the wall for a couple of months. If such action wasn’t necessary in December, some judge will surely ask, then why now?

Money for the wall will have to be taken from other projects, all of which have constituencies in Congress and among the public. Ranchers and others whose land would have to be taken by eminent domain for the wall will be up in arms.

Politically, Trump carelessly put Republican senators in a tough spot. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., may have the House pass a resolution of disapproval, which the Senate would be compelled to take up. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and his caucus would have to decide whether to support a power grab they know is unwise — or oppose Trump and risk the ire of the GOP base.

One of the most strident Republican criticisms of Obama was that he took executive actions that should have been the purview of Congress. But this action by Trump goes much further and sets a dangerous precedent.

What would keep the next Democratic president from declaring an emergency, in the wake of some mass shooting, and imposing a ban on assault weapons? Is that what McConnell wants as his legacy?

Trump cares only that his base is mollified. And that nobody remembers how Mexico was supposed to foot the bill.

Eugene Robinson is a columnist for The Washington Post.