What Negotiator

By Calvin Hill

            Perhaps the only thing worse than America’s reality show president passing his multiple business failures off as a success is having restaurateur President Artie Bucco negotiating with Tony Soprano and foreign mobsters and believing he will come out a winner. Although, having a phalanx of party members render their undying support to Donald Trump, after having publicly referred to him as a serial sexual abuser, a misogynist, narcissist, racist, moron, idiot and a xenophobic religious bigot might likely fall into the same delusional category.

As the Republicans attempt to defend the indefensible, they cry out, “The Democrats have been out to impeach President Trump from day one.” And on day one, Donald Trump was in violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution. On day one, the Trump campaign was receiving illegal foreign donations for his inauguration. Before day one, he illegally sought and accepted Russian assistance in securing his 2016 election victory. And three months before the election, his campaign was under criminal investigation. It is not surprising that Trump has brazenly tried to extort Ukraine for help in 2020. However, it is surprising that the Republicans were willing to keep changing their story in order to accept it.

Any reasonable and thoughtful assessment of Donald Trump’s career clearly indicates a high degree of unreasonable, thoughtless, and criminal decision making. That he could challenge the negotiating and deal making skills of anyone, much less someone more reasonable, more thoughtful and better educated belies the fraudulent image he paints of himself. Raining epithets of “a total disaster” at the many welcomed accomplishments of President Barack Obama illustrates Trump’s inherent jealousy of a person he could never measure up to as a husband, father, diplomat, caretaker, president, or simply, an honest, decent American citizen. So he will literally lie about almost anything and everything.

He claimed he would be able to tear apart Obama’s accomplishments, replace them with something better, and it was going to be easy. Those Republicans who ran against him knew better. The 2016 presumptive GOP nominee, Jeb Bush warned that a Donald Trump presidency would be a chaos presidency. Jeb knew, like Chris Christie knew, Lindsey Graham knew, and John Kasich knows, ideas are easy – establishing consensus and executing legislation is not. Bankrupting casinos was easy. Saving General Motors was not. Bankrupting Trump Air, steaks, water, models and magazine was easy. Protecting American consumers from snake oil banking and financial institutions was not. Teetering on financial insolvency and getting sucked in by Russian oligarchs was easy. Getting out from under the thumb of Vladimir Putin is not.

Regardless of where you fall on the ideological spectrum of whether the death of Iran’s Gen. Soleimani was murder, an assassination or self-defense, in the mind of Donald Trump it was Barack Obama’s fault that made it necessary. Trump cannot abandon his obsessive need to lie about his predecessor and the negotiated JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran. Yet, after threatening Kim Jong Un with “Fire and fury the likes of which the world has never seen,” the aging dotard negotiated with Little Rocket Man, the suspension of our important defense exercises with allied South Korea having no guarantee that North Korea would halt their nuclear weapons program or suspend their missile testing.

Trump takes pride in waving around his “nice letter” from Chairman Kim as he announces his assurance that the dictator, who oversaw the torturous murder of American Otto Warmbier, would keep his word. But as we are learning from North Korea’s continued missile testing, Kim Jong Un’s signature on “a deal” is worth about as much as a Donald J. Trump signature on deals with Atlantic City contractors. In the final analysis, the multi-country nuclear deal overseeing Iran’s compliance was carefully monitored by inspectors and reported to all the assigned parties. But since the “historic” nuclear non-proliferation deal that Trump negotiated with North Korea, there is not one single international inspector traipsing into and out of Pyongyang and reporting back to Donald Trump. In effect, it was Barack Obama, not Donald Trump, who abided by the Reagan Doctrine and philosophy, “Trust, but verify.”

The more alarming phenomenon, for those whose faith alleges to transcend the flesh of humankind, is to witness major organizations and leaders of Christians heralding a serial commandment buster who preys on the innocent and the poor, disrespects the familial bond between parents and children, and publicly admits that after having lived past his biblical three score and ten, has never done anything for which he needs to ask for God’s forgiveness. Trump is the “Christian” these Christians allege was somehow anointed and sent by God to lead this great nation. Not long ago, they accused kinder and gentler, more empathetic persons to be unworthy, lesser Christians. Full disclosure: I am by no means a biblical scholar, but how have so many “Christians” come to blaspheme the message of Christ in support of Donald Trump? Have the national communion beverages been laced with an hallucinogen that has made them stark raving mad – or is Donald Trump, who still name calls with all the vulgarity of a junior high delinquent, so good a negotiator that he can convince Christian church leaders to abandon their calling to become post-vangelical supporters of him? Is Trump so skilled a negotiator that he convinced an entire Republican Party that it is to America’s benefit that he breaks the law and violates the Constitution? Is Donald Trump really so skilled a negotiator that he has convinced, unequivocally, that all of the GOP’s prior conservative stands and beliefs were bogus, that their allies were really their enemies, and their enemies are really honest and trustworthy?

We saw on Donald Trump’s face while approaching the microphone in Helsinki and we heard it from Vladimir Putin’s own mouth, Donald Trump is his guy. Trump is on the record as having said he would rather be feared than respected. Based on what the supportive Republicans tell their colleagues and journalists, off the record, they clearly do not respect him. He has shown nothing about his negotiating skill that merits their loyalty to his mendacity, incompetence and criminality. So, what are the Republicans so fearful of that they are willing to yield their power, dignity and the sovereignty of their country while the President of the United States leads them in a self-destructive march behind the Pied Piper of Moscow?

January 11, 2020