Nancy Neuters Putin’s Pooch
(Door Hugo Kijne te Hoboken USA)
Trump’s wheels are coming off and a car crash is rapidly becoming inevitable. An impressive line-up of (in some cases former) State Department and National Security Council employees, all of whom are or were involved in US-Ukraine policies, has testified to Congress or will still testify, in spite of White House attempts to silence them. The emerging picture is that of a shadow foreign policy towards Ukraine driven by the president’s political interests and executed by Rudy Giuliani, who used three ‘amigos’: Energy Secretary Rick Perry, former Ukraine liaison Kurt Volker and Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland. Former NSC Russia expert Fiona Hill testified that John Bolton called Giuliani a ‘hand grenade who is going to blow everybody up,’ in reference to what he called the ‘drug deal’ where military aid to Ukraine was made conditional on certain deliverables. Sondland laid all the responsibility for this plot with Trump, and WH Chief of Staff Mulvaney confirmed yesterday that he was right. In the Southern District of New York a criminal and counterintelligence investigation of Giuliani is now under way that may eventually put Hizzoner in jail.
The withdrawal of US troops from Syria resulted in an invasion by Turkey, in spite of an insane letter Trump sent to president Erdogan that allegedly landed in a trashcan. In response the Syrian Kurds sought help from Bashar al-Assad, whose troops moved into northeastern Syria, accompanied by Russian soldiers who took over former US bases. In a presser with the Italian president, whom he called ‘Mozzarella,’ Trump was fine with all this. According to him Syria would be Russia’s next Afghanistan, and if the Turks and the Syrians wanted to fight over ‘a lot of sand’ that was their choice. He suggested that the Syrian Kurds had primarily fought ISIS for money and called them ‘no angels’ who had deliberately let ISIS members escape. To top it off the president called the organization of Turkish Kurds, the PKK, a greater threat than ISIS. Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo, who had been sent to Turkey to broker a ceasefire, proudly ended up negotiating the ethnic cleansing of the Kurds, giving Turkey exactly what it wanted. Trump said that the Kurds were very happy because they wouldn’t be slaughtered and called it ‘a great day for civilization.’
Apparently under stress from the impeachment threat and the fallout from his Syria decision Trump finally lost it during a White House briefing and called Nancy Pelosi a ‘third rate politician’ after she had said that with Trump ‘all roads lead to Putin,’ making her decide to leave the meeting. The president was not finished ranting and called Jim Mattis ‘the world’s most overrated general,’ because Mattis had once said that it would take two years to defeat ISIS while Trump claimed to have done it in one month. He conveniently forgot the role the Kurds played in that achievement.
The president tried to live out his passion for reality TV when the parents of a motorbike rider, who had been killed in England by the wife of an American diplomat who was driving on the wrong side of the road and subsequently fled to the US, came visit the White House. Trump kept the culprit in one room for a Jerry Springer-like reconciliation and the press in another to record it, but the couple didn’t want to meet the woman unless it was on British soil and left him with a bust.
Next to confessing to a quid pro quo in communications with Ukraine Mick Mulvaney announced that the next G7 will be held at Trump’s Doral resort, taking the president’s grifting to a whole new level. According to the latest Gallup poll 52% of Americans now support the president’s removal from office, and as that number keeps growing even Mitch McConnell will realize that Trump is no longer electable.
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