America First?

Kurdish Catastrophe:  Sadly, as predicted by everyone not named Trump, the situation is northeast Syria has gone from awful to unbearably horrible.  Despite Turkish President Erdogan’s promise, the one that Trump insists Erdogan made to him on the phone call where he pursuaded Trump to stop providing assistance to the Syrian Kurds, Turkey, our NATO ally, has been relentlessly attacking Kurdish strongholds and has even targeted US troops, saying that as long as they are still in the region, such attacks can’t be avoided.  A large and growing number of ISIS detainees, including a number of “high value” prisoners that the US military had planned to move to more secure locations, have escaped and many Kurds have been killed, including Hevrin Khalaf, a Kurdish political leader who was pulled from her car and shot in the head by a Turkish backed militia. Although at one point last week the criminally clueless Trump claimed that there were no US Troops in the area, about 1000 remained but yesterday, fearing that they could get killed by the advancing Turk forces, Defense Secretary Esper announced that all but 300 of them are being withdrawn. In order to hold off further Turkish onslaught, the Kurds have now agreed to a Russian brokered deal allowing Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad’s forces to enter their previously autonomous area. We may never know for sure why Trump agreed to Erdogan’s request: whether he did so to insure the future profitability of his Istanbul hotels; to please his sometime puppet master Putin; as an attempt, albeit ineffective one, to distract from the Ukraine fiasco; or, as the reliably isolationist Senator Rand Paul disingenously asserted yesterday, Trump had no choice because the Turks were going to make their move whether or not US forces continued to help the Kurds.  In any case, it’s fair to assume that Trump’s decision will be studied for years as an example of what happens when an “America first” leader who really puts his business interests first, one with with little knowledge or interest in geopolitics and history pushes aside the advice of his “experts” and acts on his worst instincts.  Not that it will do much to help the Kurds, but late Friday Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, one of Trump’s most avid enablers, annouced that some really serious sanctions against Turkey will be imposed at some later date to be determined because the situation of a NATO ally attacking another “ally” is complicated so its important not to act rashly.  Likewise, the House and Senate both are planning some former of legislation to punish Trukey and belatedly boster the Kurds.  All too little, too late for the Kurds and the US reputation.  In other news, late Friday Trump pledged to deploy 1800 more troops in Saudi Arabia, defending the decision by saying that the Saudis will be footing the bill making it sound like our soldiers are mercenaries available to the highest bidder.  Also, over the weekend it was reported that American officials have restarted negotiations with the Taliban, again without the presence of our Afghani allies.  This time the discussions are taking place in Pakistan, viewed as a poltically more acceptable location for throwing an ally to the wolves than Camp David.  To recap, Kurds who can’t pay but who helped fight ISIS, under the bus,  Taliban and Saudis who helped al Qaeda with the 9.11 attacks, now the the recipients of Trump’s favors. Also, a weak trade agreement was reached with China, one where we don’t impose some promised tariffs in exchange for them promising to do something later.       

Ukraine Chronicles:  EU Ambassador Sondland who last year described himself as part of Trump’s “Three Amigos” team for all things related to fighting “corruption” in Ukraine, naming Special Envoy Kurt Volker and Energy Secretary Rick Perry as the other two amigos, is due to testify later this week, a day or so after Fiona Hill, the Russian expert is due to appear.  Assuming he actually shows up, reports are that Sondland plans to tell Congress that the content of a text message he wrote denying a quid pro quo with Ukraine was dictated to him directly by Trump in a phone call.  Sondland plans to say he has no knowledge of whether Trump was telling him the truth at that moment. “It’s only true that the president said it, not that it was the truth.”  Sondland, who got his ambassadorship the old fashioned way, by contributing $1 million to the Trump campaign, appears unwilling to commit perjury, not good for Trump who really would be much better off if Sondland stayed home, plead the Fifth, or lied.  As to truth telling, last Friday former Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch who appeared for her deposition despite a last minute attempt by the White House to quash her appearance, revealed that she was “caught in a storm of unsubstantiated allegations” advanced by Rudy Giuliani and a cast of former Ukrainian officials who viewed her as a “threat to their financial and political interests.”  She said she was forced to leave Kiev on “the next plane” and removed from her post even though the State Departments Number 2 official, John Sullivan who is Trump’s nominee to replace the outgoing Jon Huntsman as Ambassador to Russia, told her that she had done nothing wrong, that she was being booted because Trump “had lost confidence in her” as in he didn’t want someone around who wouldn’t help his lawyer/fixer Giuliani dig up dirt on the Bidens or find “evidence” that Ukraine rather than Russia had been responsible for 2016 election interference.  As to that lawyer/fixer, rumors swirled all weekend that Giuliani is now being investigated for violating foreign lobbying laws.  Trump who first wavered when he was asked whether or not Giuliani was still his lawyer, appears to have concluded that, at least for now, flattering Giuliani and holding him close is a better strategy than freezing him out and leaving him to stew about ways to avoid joining that other fixer Michael Cohen in stripes, so he had him to lunch this weekend, in between golf games, the ones that he was playing while the Kurds were being killed.  As to Giuliani’s imminent demise, keep in mind that as long as William Barr remains Attorney General, the federal attorneys from the Southern District of New York who are working up the case against Giuliani will have to have a beyond solid case and possibly even have to threaten mass resignations to get Barr to sign off before moving forward with a Rudy indictment.

Revolving Door:  Shepard Smith, who Slate referred to as Fox’s propoganda alert system for his willingness to point out when his colleagues were following the Trump party line rather than telling the truth, resigned on Friday.  His parting words were “Even in our currently polarized nation, it’s my hope that the facts will win the day.  That the truth will always matter. That journalism and journalists will thrive. I’m Shepard Smith, Fox News, New York.” Although Attorney General Barr dined with Fox Chair Rupert Murdoch shortly before Smith made his announcement, for what it’s worth the network and Smith both assert that the decision to leave was all Smith’s.  Smith’s friends say that he was fed up and exhausted from the battles he’d been having with such Fox notables as Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham and that he couldn’t take it anymore. Because his contract included a non-compete clause, Smith won’t be able to sign a new one with a competitor for a while, but he’s well respected in the industry to it’s likely that he will show up eventually on another station. In addition to ridding himself of a vocal critic Trump is down another Homeland Security Secretary.  On Friday Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan, a career civil servant, resigned.  McAleenan was hardly an immigration softy; during his tenure the number of migrants apprehended at the southern border fell to about 52,000 from almost 133,000 at their peak in May, however by Trump and Stephen Miller standards, he was considered an outsider who was too nice to refugees and migrants because of his insistence of adhering to the law or closer to the law than they liked.  Additionally, he had grown outspoken about his frustrations with the way things were being run in the administration so his departure while inconveniently timed given Trump’s other problems is hardly shocking.

Updates:  Despite pressure from Trump and his Republican cohorts, Speaker Pelosi still hasn’t agreed to move forward with a floor vote on the impeachment inquiry.  Her view is that the the vote is not constitutionally required, that the Republicans are only demanding one as a stalling tactic, one that would also further expose purple/red district vulnerable Democrats who would rather not take a vote at this time. Trump insists that he would cooperate with the inquiry after the vote, but Pelosi is shrewd enough to know that he would then come up with other excuses to obstruct.  On the legal front, Trump lost a number of lower court decisions last week related to his administration’s treatment of migrants and the shifting of funds from the military to his wall, but his most significant loss took place in the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.  By a two to one vote, the court ruled that the subpoena for accounting firm Mazar’s to release eight years of his financial records is valid.  Notably, the one dissenting vote came from Neomi Rao, a former Trump administration official who Trump appointed to the court in March to replace the slot vacated by newbie Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh.  She said that she would have quashed the subpoena as exceeding the House’s legislative powers.  Trump is expected to appeal to either the full Court of Appeals and/or directly to the Supreme Court, but the decision, which was the first test at the appeals court level of the Trump legal team’s “sweeping challenges to the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight of his activities” portends rough days ahead for Trump.

Democratic Stuff:  Bernie Sanders is still running and has retracted his statement that he would be cutting his schedule back a bit even though he should cut back a bit.  He, and eleven other Democratic candidates will be participating in another debate on Tuesday night. This time around Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard who has been attacking the press for not being nice to her and billionaire investor Tom Steyer will be on the stage.  Expectations are that Gabbard will do her best to win most the disruptive prize.  Though most of the others are likely to stay away from attacking Biden over the Ukraine stuff, she will probably go after him like a heat seeking missile.  As to Biden, his son, Hunter, announced that he is stepping down from his Chinese hedge fund board, where contrary to Trump’s assertions he did not make $1 billion, and that to the extent that his father is elected president he won’t work for any foreign owned entities.  Ivanka, Don Jr and Eric, now it’s your turn.