Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Monday, August 7, 2017

Trump: Too Incompetent to Serve



Keep the Trump Leaks Coming


 The president is too incompetent to serve, and Congress must be pressured into removing him.

BY BRIAN BEUTLER August 4, 2017

 Both in content and in context, the official transcripts of Donald Trump’s January phone calls with Australian Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto—which were leaked to The Washington Post and published —depict a president whose very presence in high office is destabilizing, and whose continued service constitutes a dangerous crisis. 

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 It is perfectly consistent to say that the growing clout of generals John Kelly (the White House chief of staff), H.R. McMaster (the national security advisor), and Jim Mattis (the defense secretary) is preferable to an alternative in which Trump shambles through his presidency unencumbered, but also dangerous in its own right, and evidence of serious institutional failure. 

The hope is apparently to keep Trump’s administration within certain guardrails, so that if and when it fails, he doesn’t take the country and the world off the road with him. To that end, this trio has met with some modest success. Kelly has—in his brief tenure, and for now at least—managed to impose more control over the flow of aides, information, and other forms of presidential influence in and out of the Oval Office better than his predecessor, Reince Priebus, ever could. McMaster has, after months of setbacks, successfully removed two corrosive figures from the National Security Council—both holdovers from the abbreviated Michael Flynn era. 

Where the generals haven’t been empowered to run the show, they have asserted themselves nonetheless. “In the earliest weeks of Trump’s presidency,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday, Mattis and Kelly agreed “that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House.” 

It would be sensationalizing things to call this a soft coup, but it is impossible to deny that real presidential powers have been diluted or usurped. Elected officials have decided that leaving the functioning of the government to unelected military officers is politically preferable to invoking constitutional remedies that would require them to vote. When a president can no longer serve faithfully, there are means available to Congress and the cabinet, through the impeachment power and section four of the 25th Amendment, to remove him. 

Pushing Trump out of office would be a politically destabilizing event in its own right, perhaps more acutely so than handing the reins of government over to a cadre of generals and hoping for the best. But the processes are legitimate, and were created for precisely the kind of situation that confronts us today. It is often said that impeachment is a political process, but it is also a normative one. Or at least, it should be the norm that elected officials step in to protect the public from a president who is lawless and befuddled—even when the president happens to be from the same party. 

If you fear the creep of autocracy or the crisis of absentee leadership in Trump’s White House, then the truly troubling thing isn’t that government officials, current and former, are sounding the alarm. It’s that the people who have the power to end these crises are leaving us all at risk by placing their faith in generals and looking the other way. 

 Brian Beutler is a senior editor at The New Republic.

14 comments:

Clearwater, Florida said...

Trump is incompetent and his base is shriveling. Hahahahaha!


"GOP pollster finds Trump support diving into ‘dangerously low territory’ as his base shrivels"

http://www.rawstory.com/2017/08/gop-pollster-finds-trump-support-diving-into-dangerously-low-territory-as-his-base-shrivels/#.WYhkjRndPRA.facebook

Shaw Kenawe said...



Chris Wallace: Obama Didn’t Like The Media, ‘But He Never Said We Were An Enemy’
“He never went as far as President Trump has, and that’s what’s concerning.”

Kevin Robbins said...

Shaw, I guess you haven't seen the news. "The Trump base is far bigger & stronger than ever before." You just have to squint really hard.

Sal Vador said...

The BBC reported that CIA agents have confirmed that Russia has multiple videos of Trump filmed on multiple dates in multiple hotels with multiple hookers doing...multiple things. The ideal blackmail scenario.

On ABC, George Stephanopoulos called Kellyanne Conway out for refusing to answer a question about Trump writing Li'l Donnie's "excuse note" for him. Conway tried to duck answering by bringing up Hillary and Obama, a trick most right wingers use all the time. “Kellyanne, you’re simply changing the subject,” Stephanopoulos interrupted her in mid-Benghazi.
Senate Republicans left town for a break, after not passing one single piece of major legislation, and failing to accomplish the one thing they set out to do - kill Americans by taking away their healthcare. Republicans cannot govern and they demonstrate failure every time they try.

Dave Miller said...

Sal... "mid Benghazi"!

Classic.

Meanwhile today the mother Ship is sailing on the seas of "fake news" asking why anyone with a brain cannot grasp a post that is full of lies, not accurate, posits facts not in existence and was shown to be BS years ago.

And these folks are the base of the Trumpians...

Shaw Kenawe said...

Dave I ventured over to that blog and saw that she linked to a site called "Clash Daily."

"Clash Daily" is a "questionable source and fake news":

QUESTIONABLE SOURCE

A questionable source exhibits one or more of the following: extreme bias, overt propaganda, poor or no sourcing to credible information and/or is fake news. Fake News is the deliberate attempt to publish hoaxes and/or disinformation for the purpose of profit or influence (Learn More). Sources listed in the Questionable Category may be very untrustworthy and should be fact checked on a per article basis. Please note sources on this list are not considered fake news unless specifically written in the notes section for that source. See all Questionable sources.

Bias: Extreme Right, Hate Group, Propaganda

Notes: Clash Daily is a website founded by Doug Giles, an extreme christian right pastor. The content of the website is extreme right wing that often is not factual, unscientific and biased. It demonstrates opposition toward LGBT people, atheists and Muslims through wording and political affiliation. Clash Daily is on Politifact’s Fake News List. (10/19/2016) Updated (6/19/2017)


Those folks thrive on those types of "questionable" sources. They don't know any better. WYD had to delete a post that was totally fake. They don't know any better. I pity them. They've been suckered by a really talented con man -- Trump. And they don't seem to care.

Pity them. The 30 percenters.

Les Carpenter said...

WYD and affiliate weblog FreeThinke are both purveyors of the false narrative of Trump and the extreme religious right. That doesn't even scrath the surface.

Shaw Kenawe said...

:
WYD and the sister far right rabid bloggers: They are the kind of people who believe what they want to believe. On some level many of Trump's followers know he's a con man. But he's their con man. As long as he's sticking it to the people they hate, they don't care.

And that makes them all exceptionally corrupt.

Les Carpenter said...

Trump is corrupt. He appeals to corrupt and easily corrupted individuals.

Anonymous said...

Trump says his base is stronger than ever while he's losing support except from old white uneducated people they'll stiay with him like fleas on a sewer rat. Almost 70% Americans reject the bullshitting jerk.

Dave said...


It’s no secret that President Trump has faced more criticism, more fake news stories, more hostile attacks from the leftist media, the Hollywood crowd, the Late Night TV Shows, the Pussy- Hatters, and the Rioters that have been going on one after another, day by day and mostly by anonymous sources, and headlines with speculation rather than facts. . But there are a few facts, and accomplishments that they just can not change, such as the FACT that the economy has not only improved, but exploded! The stock market continues to hit new records almost on a daily basis despite all the fear mongering from Obama’s and Hillary’s “Resistance.”


Numbers, speak louder than news headlines. The, for example, there have been 209,000 new jobs created last month, beating all expectations!


More Americans have been getting back to work and finding jobs, and more Americans are employed now than at any time in the Obama administration.

These numbers show that Trump’s economic program has been working for all Americans! . It’s a shame that the, New York Times, CNN, and the Liberals who have been bitching and moaning having been reading the REAL news.

Yes it’s really a shame that the lefties aren’t reading the latest new , or they may have found that the Eric Bolling Accuser is really just a lying Anti-Trump Professor who just happens to be the same person that accused Bill O’Reilly, and who has been making FALSE Claims for decades, claims that cannot be proved, Claims that have No Proof or Evidence ! And isn’t it funny that all of these “Claims” happen the be against people who work for Fox News!!!


Stop your insane barfing about your Fake conspiracy theories it's getting old, and boring.. We are getting BORED from your stupid unsubstantiated, “Claims” that come from t from ignorance, and not from facts!

Facts, like Hillary Clinton's "giving Russia 20% of US uranium!

Ray said...

Shaw, regarding getting rid of Trump, it would be wise to remember this:

"If you drive out the demon, make sure to fill that empty space with good or the demon will return seven-fold."

Shaw Kenawe said...

FAKE "Dave," (or is it TOM/Luke/Steve again?)

Your comment is full of b.s., just like the supreme b.s.er who lives in the White House, I mean "The Dump," as Trump so patriotically called it.

Go back to your 30 percenters and sell that bullshit to them. We just laugh at it here.

Leo T. Lyon said...

Former Ted Cruz campaign spokesperson Rick Tyler suggested putting President Trump's aides on "24-hour suicide watch" following a new poll that showed a 14 percent drop in support for Trump among Republicans since he took office.