Trump Tripped

What did we learn from Michael Cohen's testimony before the House Oversight Committee this past week?  Well, we learned that Donald Trump is a bigot, we learned that Trump personally saw to it that Cohen paid the two women he slept while married to Melania to keep quiet and that Trump reimbursed Cohen personally, and that it turns out that Trump was well aware of the Wikileaks dump of DNC e-mails after all.

In short, we learned nothing new.  But the fact that it all came out of Cohen's mouth made it all the more believable.

Except of course, for the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, who refused to believe Cohen because he had lied to Congress before.  But Representative Stephen Lynch, a Democrat from Massachusetts, made it clear why the Republicans had problems with Cohen.  It wasn't that they thought Cohen would lie this time, but rather, that he would tell the truth.  And the GOP committee members bashed Cohen without defending Turmp.

Although I'm disappointed in her for her botched roll-out of the Green New Deal - and although I'm flabbergasted by her threats to run liberals against moderate House Democrats like my own congresswoman, Representative Mikie Sherill (D-NJ), in the 2020 primaries if they vote with Republicans on, well, anything - Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was still impressive in how she got answers from Cohen about the suppressed stories that the National Enquirer and its parent company, American Media Incorporated, have been hiding. Cohen replied that he was no longer certain of where these documents were, and  Ocasio-Cortez was able to get Cohen to tell her and the committee under oath who might know without asking for salacious details about the stories themselves.  He named David Pecker, Barry Levine, and Dylan Howard.

It was kind of entertaining to hear Cohen say that Trump never expected to win the Presidency and only ran to make money off the 2016 campaign, but there's nothing funny about the fact that Trump won and that he's ripping off the country.  It may be, though, the Trump's time is almost up.  Not only is he flailing and flapping like a fish out of water at home, he's bumbling and bungling abroad.  His summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un accomplished nothing, and Kim realized, when asking for a relief from sanctions before giving up his nuclear weapons,. that Trump, while stupid, is by no means insane.  Trump's mature handling of an otherwise regrettable situation, however, doesn't excuse his own ignorance of foreign affairs.

But at least the old draft dodger finally made it to Vietnam. 

If Trump finally falls to scandals of his own making, historians will say that it started here.  If he comes back stronger than ever, the Democrats will be blamed for blowing a golden opportunity to win back power in 2020.  Alas, that may yet happen. 

Suicide Is Painless

Donald Trump is going to talk with North Korea's Kim Jong Un?

This is both the best and the worst news anyone could have imagined.  Trump has an opportunity to establish a productive rapport with Kim over his nukes - but he's going into this meeting, likely to take place in May, with no diplomatic background, few if any Korea experts by his side, no sense of the history of post-war Korea (or its pre-war history as a Japanese colony, for that matter), and no understanding of how summits really work.  On the other hand, he and Kim complement each other as mirror images - they're both pompous, self-absorbed, megalomaniacal, and consumed by a desire to be taken seriously.  So maybe they'll be best buddies.

Trump isn't as crazy as Kim, but Kim isn't as stupid as Trump - he's actually a shrewd cookie, as Trump himself has acknowledged.  He could play Trump for a fool, the same way Khrushchev played Kennedy for a fool in Vienna at their only summit meeting in 1961. Except that Kennedy knew he'd been played for a fool, and a year later he resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Trump - who has Reggie Mantle's ego but is cursed with Archie Andrews' incompetence - could be played for a fool but go away from this meeting thinking he got the better of Kim . . . and then . . .    

Every President since Nixon, who famously went to China and established a rapport with Mao and Chou (clearing the way for President Carter to establish full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979), has wanted a major diplomatic breakthrough with an unfriendly nation.  Obama did it with a nuclear deal with Iran and a normalization of relations with Cuba (both short-lived, thanks to Debbie Wasserman Schultz tipping the scales for Hillary and letting Trump get in power and roll back both achievements).  Reagan tried to reach out to Iranian "moderates" to improve relations with the Islamic Republic and that plan backfired miserably . . . but he redeemed himself with an important arms-control treaty with the Soviet Union.  But previous Presidents had a general idea of what they were doing.  Trump is making things up as he goes along.    

This will bring on many changes . . . but you can take or leave it . . . if you please.