Put a Corker In It

Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who's not running for re-election in 2018, is speaking out against Donald Trump's handling of the job he was elected to.  He said that Trump is treating the Presidency and setting the nation "on a path to World War III" in his handling of the Korea crisis and by his undermining of key foreign-policy aides and and advisers. 

"I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it's a situation of trying to contain him," Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,  said, comparing the Oval Office to an adult day care center.  This comes right after Corker (below) said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and White House chief of staff John Kelly are the only three men keeping us out of chaos.

The problem is that Tillerson's efforts at diplomacy to handle the crisis in Asia were scuttled by Trump himself, Kelly is one facepalm away from quitting the White House after Trump's United Nations speech, and Mattis can't contain the President alone.

Trump is blundering his way into a major catastrophe just like the European powers walked in to a major conflagration to save face after the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which sparked World War I by stoking nationalist resentments that had been building up in Europe for decades.  Trump could start a war with North Korea's Kim Jong Un by doing and saying the wrong thing to provoke the North Koreans  . . . and maybe also the Chinese, considering his airheaded remark on trade.  The good news is that other Republicans agree with Corker.  The bad news is that they don't want to say or do anything about it because they have to get their tax reform bill through.

And despite all of this, former Bill Clinton adviser Doug Sosnik, noting tensions within the Democratic Party and a dispirited and disorganized opposition to Trump, believes that Trump can get re-elected in 2020.

The good news is that Democrats, despite what Sosnik says, don't have to worry about 2020.  The bad news is that's because we're not likely to make it to 2019 . . . or 2018. :-O