Here's what Tea Party Republican Joe Walsh said about Trump

On August 15th, former one-term Tea Party Republican congressman from Illinois Joe Walsh had this to say about President Donald Trump in a New York Times op-ed titled "Challenge Trump From the Right."  Walsh was elected to Congress in 2011.   He served one term, then became a conservative talk-radio host.

Since writing this op-ed, calling for a primary challenger to Trump from the right,  he has decided to become that person himself.  So let's look back at what he said in the op-ed.                                      :

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Walsh says that he entered Congress in 2011 "as an insurgent Tea Party Republican.  My goals were conservative and clear:  restrain executive power and reduce the debt.  Barack Obama was president then, and it was easy for us to rail against runaway spending and executive overreach.

"Eight years later, Mr. Trump has increased the deficit more than $100 year over year -- it's now nearing $1 trillion -- and we hear not a word of protest from my former Republican colleagues.  He abuses the Constitution for his narcissistic trade war.  . . .  Mr. Trump's tariffs are a tax increase on middle-class Americans and are devastating to our farmers.   That's not a smart electoral strategy.

"It's one of the many reasons Mr. Trump is ripe for a primary challenge. . . . 

"Fiscal matters are only part of it.  At the most basic level, Mr. Trump is unfit for office.  His lies are so numerous . . . . 

"I didn't vote vote for Mr. Trump in 2016 because I liked him.  I voted for him because because he wasn't Hillary Clinton.   Once he was elected, I gave him a fair hearing and tried to give him the benefit of of the doubt.   But I soon realized that I couldn't support him because of the danger he poses to the country, especially the division he sows at every chanced, culminating a few weeks ago in his ugly racist attack on four minority congresswomen.

"The fact is, Mr. Trump is a racist arsonist who encourages bigotry and xenophobia to rouse his base his base and advance his electoral prospects.  In this, he inspires imitators.

"Republicans should view Mr. Trump as the liability he is. . . . In front of the world, he sides with Vladimir Putin over our own intelligence community.   That's dangerous.  He encouraged Russian interference in the 2016 election.  That's reckless.  For three years he has been at war with our federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies, as he embraces tyrants abroad and embarrasses our allies.  That's un-American. . . .

"He's reckless on fiscal issues;  he's incompetent on the border;  he's clueless on trade   he misunderstands executive power;  and he subverts the rule of law. . . .

"[Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld] is challenging Mr. Trump from the center.  But the president is more vulnerable to a challenge from the right. . . .  We need someone who could stand up, look the president in the eye and say:  'Enough, sir.  We've had enough of your indecency.  We've had enough of your lies, your bullying, your cruelty, enough of your insults, your daily drama, your incitement, enough of the danger you place this country in every single day.  We don't want any of this anymore;  and the country certainly can't stand four more years of it.'"

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Joe Walsh is not someone I would want to vote for.   But he has Donald Trump pegged to perfection.    And he's unafraid to put it in print -- and, if he does run a primary campaign, he will presumably have a platform from which to broadcast it far and wide -- as a conservative Republican.

I think we're seeing the building of a movement among Republicans -- some like Justin Amash and Michael Steele, who are speaking clearly but with restraint;  and others, more likely to rant and rave, like Anthony Scaramucci and Joe Walsh.

But it's happening.

Ralph

Danes react to Trump's disrespect based on a whim

To further the meme I've been pursuing for the past week --- that there is beginning to be a groundswell of pushback from Republicans against Trump as being unfit for office and should not be re-elected -- I offer this editorial from the Washington Examiner.

Wikileaks describes the Examiner as conservative, envisioned by its creator as a competitor to The Washington Post.    Much of the journalistic talent was hired from the right wing paper, The Washington Times.    According to Politico, quoting one former employee, the publisher's instructions about the editorial page were explicit:    "nothing but conservative columns and conservative op-ed writers."     The paper endorsed John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.

With that context, here are excerpts from a recent column in the Washington Examiner written by Quin Hillyer.

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"Something is rotten in President Trump canceling his trip to Denmark.

"In yet another example of Trump's undiplomatic rudeness, the bumptious billionaire has canceled an already scheduled state visit to Denmark, apparently upset that the tiny, friendly nation won’t jump at his command.

"Invited to Copenhagen by Queen Margrethe II, Trump specifically had said that the visit was not dependent on Denmark’s level of interest in his idea of buying the vast island of Greenland from the Danes. Once both Danish premier Kim Kielsen and prime minister Mette Frederiksen said there is no chance of them selling Greenland, though, Trump gave the lie to his own earlier words by abruptly canceling the trip and specifically citing Greenland as the reason.

"To say Trump’s behavior here is childish is to insult children. Or at least, the worst of spoiled brats now have a new role model.

"Small though it is, Denmark is a valuable and longstanding ally. It allows the U.S. to operate the Thule Air Base on Greenland, which is of great strategic significance, on terms extremely generous to the U.S. Denmark stands with its larger ally when most other nations don’t, including in joining Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Denmark has no obvious direct interest in the Middle East, but it provides troops when asked — 43 of whom have lost their lives in American-led missions in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan. (In terms of percentage of population, that would be the equivalent of U.S. losses of some 2,500 personnel.)

"Trump’s idea of buying Greenland might well be mutually beneficial to Americans and Danes, but it obviously came out of proverbial left field as far as the Danes were concerned. Obviously, nobody in the Trump administration had bothered telling them of Trump’s interest. It would be unreasonable to expect them to immediately comply, or even to comply at all. Even if Denmark decides it makes sense to sell, there are the desires of Greenland’s 56,000 inhabitants to consider. Because this state visit was arranged without any signal that a purchase of Greenland was on the agenda, much less even being considered, it is a nasty trick indeed to kill the trip just because Denmark isn’t jumping at the chance to relinquish its largest territory.

"Naturally and correctly, the people of Denmark and Greenland find Trump’s crude power play “deeply insulting,” in the words of former prime minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt. “Total chaos,” former finance minister Kristian Jensen wrote. “This has gone from a great opportunity for a strengthened dialogue between allies to a diplomatic crisis.” (Quotes from the New York Times.)

"The rotten smell to all this is emanating not from the state of Denmark, but from the current state of the Oval Office. The president’s diplomatic hygiene is abominable."

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Now let's be clear about the context.   This was published in Washington's conservative newspaper.   It calls Trump's ploy "a nasty trick."   The author says to call Trump's behavior childish is an insult to children.   And he closes by referring to "the rotten smell . . . emanating from the Oval Office" as the president's "abominable diplomatic hygiene."

The ink on this story was hardly dry when there came the, perhaps leaked, information that former one-term Tea Party congressman from Illinois, Joe Walsh, was going to mount a presidential run to challenge Trump from the right in the Republican primary.

More on this in my next post, including an op-ed that Welsh wrote for the New York Times a few days before he announced, and in which he mounts a full-throated denunciation of Donald Trump and calls for someone to mount a primary challenge from the right.

Ralph

Has Trump gone round the bend?

Take two things President Trump said in the past 48 hours:

1.  In talking about the state of our economy and whether we need to worry about a recession, he says contradictory things.   First, he declares that our economy is strong.   But then he rants about what a big mistake it was for Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to raise interest rates -- it's all his fault.

So how can the economy be both good -- and there is a villain who is responsible for f--king things up?   But that's not the "round the bend" thing.

In talking to the media about this, Trump painted himself as the savior.    It should have been fixed before by previous presidents -- but in fact, Trump said, looking up at the heavens with a magnanimous gesture -- "I was the chosen one" to come in a fix this.

Now, one can argue that he was joking.   But, underneath turning it into a joke, I have little doubt that Donald J. Trump really does believe that he is The Chosen One.

2.  This one is more serious because it involves international relations with an ally -- and it has far-ranging diplomatic and trust issues for our standing in the world.   President Trump had accepted the formal invitation from the Danish government to come for a state visit, and it was scheduled to take place on September 2nd and 3rd, less than two weeks away.   And, according to one source, Trump himself had requested the state visit.

Who knows what motivated the idea, but a couple of days ago, Trump floated the idea that we -- the United States -- should buy the island nation of Greenland, which is a territory of Denmark.   It is a massive island, mostly covered by ice, occupying a strategic space between the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans, with a population of about 50,000 concentrated along the lower coastal areas.    As the arctic ice melts and these waters become navigable, there could be important benefits to having control of it;  and we already have a military station there.

Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen rejected the idea and, according to Trump, called it "absurd."   Now we don't know what they said in private -- only what has been reported by the media.    But it seems that Trump can't stand the humiliation of having a woman call his idea absurd.  So he has cancelled his state visit and called the Prime Minister's response "nasty" -- his favorite word for denouncing women who stand up to him.

Here's why this is perhaps the most disturbing example of Trump's erratic behavior.   Here he has caused an international incident based on his petulant response to his own whim.    No case has been made for trying to buy Greenland.  As Chris Hayes put it:   "It's like a guy in a bar leaned over and said to Trump, out of the blue, 'Hey, why don't you guys buy Greenland?"    And the president of the U.S. thought:   "Yeah, why don't we buy Greenland?"    Then, without further discussion with aides and experts, he tells the Danish P.M.   "We want to talk to you about buying Greenland."

Is there any constituency that is champing at the bit to own Greenland?   If so, it's a well-concealed secret.   Perhaps one of Trump's wealthy friends convinced him that there are valuable resources to be mined when the ice melts.    Or maybe some faction in the military thinks we need to own the real estate that we now lease from them for our airbase.    Nobody has given any reasons.   So it sounds like a whim.

And besides, the Danish Prime Minister may have, in private, called it an absurd idea.  But her public response was very measured, ending with this sobering thought:  "Thankfully, the time where you buy and sell other countries and populations is over.  Let's leave it at that."

We know which one was the adult in this incident.   Fortunately the consequences are not catastrophic -- only further erosion of the U.S.'s status as a trustworthy partner in the free world and in NATO.   But suppose it had been a showdown with Russia or North Korea or Iran involving nuclear weapons?

This kind of childish behavior from Trump is only getting worse as he seems to be coming unhinged.   I get the feeling that the forces are marshaling among a growing number of Republicans to address this.

Of course, Anthony Scaramucci began last week.   Then Michael Steele, the former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, began speaking out a few days ago.

Stay tuned.

Ralph

"Trump's scam is failing him, and he's in a panic over it." Washington Post

That's the title of an important Washington  Post article by Greg Sargent.   Here are some excerpts:

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"As President Trump prepares to run for reelection on the claim that his populist nationalist agenda has been a smashing success, it’s awfully telling that Trump and his advisers have now launched a frantic, multi-front effort to deny glaring truths about that agenda that are all right there in plain sight, for all of us to see.

"A new report in the New York Times documents an emerging pattern: Trump is increasingly explaining away warning signs of a potential recession by resorting to lurid conspiracy theories. Trump claims the Federal Reserve is working against him. He also says the “Fake News Media” is fabricating recession fears — and exaggerating the damage of Trump’s trade war with China, a key driver of those fears — to cloud his reelection chances.

"What we’re seeing here should be understood as panic. The Times reports this on Trump’s private ventings to advisers:

"Mr. Trump has been agitated in discussions of the economy . . . .

"Trump’s advisers are urging him to dial down the trade war with China . . . . 

"Trump falsely says China pays his tariffs . . . . But studies show otherwise. . . .
. . . . also undermined by the niggling fact that his own administration has secured billions and billions of dollars in aid to farmers harmed by China’s retaliations. . . .   [in other words, having the US government bail out our own farmers is proof that Trump tariffs have hurt our own economy.]

"On both these fronts, [tax cuts and job-creating investments] Trump’s economic agenda has failed to deliver for workers. . . .

"Meanwhile, the trade war wreckage continues to mount, damaging Trump’s own constituencies and, now, helping to threaten a possible recession. . . .

"[T]he bottom line is that Trump’s 'America First' nationalism is looming as an economically destructive factor to a far greater extent than Trump’s plutocratic tax cut is acting as an economic positive. . . .

"The story Trump told was that he would end the selling out of workers by “elites,” by shaking down China and other countries, forcing them to revamp trade deals that were robbing workers blind. Meanwhile, his tax cut would put tons of cash in workers’ pockets and fuel an explosion of trickle-down investment.

"But the former is threatening disaster. And the latter did a lot more for those hated elites than it has done for working people.

"Trump is still telling that same story. It’s certainly possible that this story might work among just enough Rust Belt voters to drive an electoral college win amid an even bigger popular-vote loss this time. But it’s clear that Trump himself fears his story is at serious risk of failing him. "

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Perhaps we shouldn't laugh at Anthony Scaramucci when he says that Trump will give up his 2020 campaign by March 2020 and that he, Scaramucci, is trying to put together a coalition of former cabinet members that will publicly come out against Trump and help recruit a replacement.  "They know it's a crisis. . . . The guy is unstable.  Everyone inside knows it, everyone outside knows it.   Let's see if we can find a viable alternative."   That is what Scaramucci said to CNN's Alisyn Camerota on air.

Ralph

PS:   And if that isn't bad enough, Trump ended his week of golf vacation faced with news of an NBC/WallStreetJournal poll.   It asks who will you "probably or likely support" in the election?

     40% chose Trump
     52% chose "the Democratic candidate"

Yes, that's right.   In this poll, Trump would lose to anyone the Democrats chose.   That is stunning -- when just a week or so ago, polls showed him losing by just a few points to the Democratic front-runners.   Now, according to this poll, he'd lose to any Democratic candidate.

Maybe Scaramucci knows something.