Every day, the desk at every major U.S. newspaper asks the same question:
What will it be today? Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?
The question is about which persona constitutes the “real” Donald Trump. It’s worth asking, because in recent days the president has been telegraphing mutually exclusive versions of who he is, what he thinks, and what he’s likely to do next.
In just the span of a week we got his back-to-Afghanistan speech (calm, read from a teleprompter), his address to the American Legion (sober, read from a teleprompter) and that hateful rant (largely ad-libbed) to the pitchfork people in Phoenix — a basket of deplorables so bovine that they applauded when Trump threatened to shut down the American government to force Congress to fund that crazy Mexican border wall project. You know — the wall Mexico was supposed to pay for.
The debate about Trump’s true nature is utterly phoney. It is premised on the notion that there are quarrelling personalities inside the Orange One duelling for supremacy. Hogwash.
Is there a single person anywhere who believes that Teleprompter Trump is anything but Trump on tranquilizers, mouthing words he doesn’t understand with a vacant look in his eyes? He might as well be reading the back of a cereal box.
No, it’s never a question of Dr. Jekyl or Mr. Hyde. When the president is not sedated for reasons of political decorum, he is simply Trump — the real Trump. He’s a liar, a bully, a divider, a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a political arsonist who can’t wait to throw gasoline on the national campfire. This guy even swears when speechifying to Boy Scouts.
There is no kindly Dr. Jekyll who occasionally turns into a monster. Trump is only and always Hyde. When he reads words off a teleprompter during one of those episodes of staff-imposed house-training, they mean absolutely nothing to him. In the end, Trump will piss on the carpet at the first opportunity.
Praising Trump for delivering a canned speech — something the American media does far too often, in its desperation to find something approaching “normalcy” in the most power elected official in the world — is like praising someone for talking in their sleep.
Despite the efforts of Trump’s enablers, people are getting more than a little nervous about the current tenant of the Oval Office — partly because he is also the uncontested custodian of the nuclear football and the codes that could unleash Armageddon.
Republican Senator Bob Corker recently wondered aloud if Trump has the “stability” for the job. The Senate’s majority leader would normally intervene in such internecine punch-ups — except Trump isn’t talking to Mitch McConnell these days. Let’s just repeat that point: The president of the United States is snubbing the leader of the co-equal, super-powerful Senate — a fellow Republican, a man without whom Trump cannot get anything useful done.
McConnell, you see, is a loser. Trump blames him for the fact that the Republican-controlled Senate scuppered Trump’s plan to kill Obamacare. Senator John McCain (trashed again in Trump’s Phoenix screed) helped defeat his party’s attempt to repeal Obamacare — and Trump has already dismissed McCain as a loser for having gotten himself captured during the Vietnam War.
Those who know Trump best are getting more skittish by the day. They’re cats on a hot tin roof. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper recently asked aloud how much longer the U.S. would have to “endure this nightmare” of a Trump presidency.
Clapper is particularly worried that Trump could order a nuclear attack against North Korea in a “fit of pique” — with virtually no one to stop him. Picture it. Instead of tweeting about the sins of CNN at 3 a.m., Trump instead decides to nuke Kim Jong Un. Ivanka is too busy counterfeiting shoes to stop him.
Over the top, you say? Maybe. Hope so. But with this president, the truth may well reside in hyperbole.
One of the more foolish assessments of the Trump presidency is that it is somehow a problem of “American” politics. Think about that for a moment.
This is a president who has threatened nuclear war with North Korea, menaced Venezuela with the spectre of invasion, and recently expanded the interminable conflict in Afghanistan by sending more troops to fight in a war he formerly deplored. Donald Trump is not an American problem. He threatens the world.
And that includes Canada. I would argue that Trump policies have already had a profound — and negative — impact on Trudeau government decisions, with more landmines buried in the terrain ahead.
After President Trump took NATO leaders to the woodshed for not committing enough money to their defence budgets, Canada vowed to increase military spending by an astonishing 73 per cent over the next decade.
It’s funny: I recall Trudeau’s promise during the 2015 election of more funding for the arts, but not a pitch to blow up the military budget. Striking a hideously hollow note, Defense Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan dutifully said the policy was “made-in-Canada.”
Others, including The Guardian newspaper, tied the increase in Canada’s military budget directly to pressure from the U.S — from Donald Trump. Not surprisingly, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis warmly welcomed the news and passed on his congratulations. Why wouldn’t he? Trump got exactly what he wanted.
And then there is immigration. Trump has made the global refugee crisis far worse by banning immigration from seven Muslim countries, and by cracking down on millions of illegal aliens living in the United States. That’s a big problem for Canada, as we are now seeing.
Since June, 7,500 people have crossed the border seeking “irregular” asylum in Canada. There is now a tent community full of people camping out on the Quebec/New York border. No one knows if the people flow will turn into a flood that overwhelms Canada’s immigration system.
Don’t blame the people moving north. Facing a ban or deportation, why wouldn’t desperate people cab it to Canada and try their luck at the refugee roulette wheel? And it was Justin Trudeau who put out the welcome mat, famously tweeting during last spring’s worldwide refugee crisis that “regardless of who you are or where you come from, there’s always a place for you in Canada.”
And note Donald Trump’s giant footprint on the NAFTA do-over. Trump has already said he will probably cancel the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. It’s probably standard bullshit from his “art of the deal” reptile brain — but veiled threats have a way of lowering expectations.
A big test is coming for Trudeau; sucking up and calling it ‘diplomacy’ won’t help him pass. Trump is a taker. He wants more manufactured goods, like automobiles, made in the USA. He wants the NAFTA dispute resolution mechanism, Chapter 19, dumped. He wants access to government procurement contracts in Canada and Mexico, but an America First policy at home. And he wants unfavorable merchandise trade deficits with both NAFTA partners reversed.
Donald Trump is easily satisfied … as long as you give him everything he wants, the minute he demands it.
Now the mid-term elections loom in the U.S. A lot of blue collars in the Rust Belt are sweating these days, waiting to see if Trump delivers on his promise of “great new trade deals” for American workers.
Help for everyone may be at hand. Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, has introduced legislation requiring the presence of a psychiatrist in the White House. Short of that practical measure becoming law, it would pay our leaders to remember that there is only one Donald Trump.
And he makes Mr. Hyde look like the Good Humour Man.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Michael Harris
What will it be today? Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?
The question is about which persona constitutes the “real” Donald Trump. It’s worth asking, because in recent days the president has been telegraphing mutually exclusive versions of who he is, what he thinks, and what he’s likely to do next.
In just the span of a week we got his back-to-Afghanistan speech (calm, read from a teleprompter), his address to the American Legion (sober, read from a teleprompter) and that hateful rant (largely ad-libbed) to the pitchfork people in Phoenix — a basket of deplorables so bovine that they applauded when Trump threatened to shut down the American government to force Congress to fund that crazy Mexican border wall project. You know — the wall Mexico was supposed to pay for.
The debate about Trump’s true nature is utterly phoney. It is premised on the notion that there are quarrelling personalities inside the Orange One duelling for supremacy. Hogwash.
Is there a single person anywhere who believes that Teleprompter Trump is anything but Trump on tranquilizers, mouthing words he doesn’t understand with a vacant look in his eyes? He might as well be reading the back of a cereal box.
No, it’s never a question of Dr. Jekyl or Mr. Hyde. When the president is not sedated for reasons of political decorum, he is simply Trump — the real Trump. He’s a liar, a bully, a divider, a narcissist, a megalomaniac, a political arsonist who can’t wait to throw gasoline on the national campfire. This guy even swears when speechifying to Boy Scouts.
There is no kindly Dr. Jekyll who occasionally turns into a monster. Trump is only and always Hyde. When he reads words off a teleprompter during one of those episodes of staff-imposed house-training, they mean absolutely nothing to him. In the end, Trump will piss on the carpet at the first opportunity.
Praising Trump for delivering a canned speech — something the American media does far too often, in its desperation to find something approaching “normalcy” in the most power elected official in the world — is like praising someone for talking in their sleep.
Despite the efforts of Trump’s enablers, people are getting more than a little nervous about the current tenant of the Oval Office — partly because he is also the uncontested custodian of the nuclear football and the codes that could unleash Armageddon.
Republican Senator Bob Corker recently wondered aloud if Trump has the “stability” for the job. The Senate’s majority leader would normally intervene in such internecine punch-ups — except Trump isn’t talking to Mitch McConnell these days. Let’s just repeat that point: The president of the United States is snubbing the leader of the co-equal, super-powerful Senate — a fellow Republican, a man without whom Trump cannot get anything useful done.
McConnell, you see, is a loser. Trump blames him for the fact that the Republican-controlled Senate scuppered Trump’s plan to kill Obamacare. Senator John McCain (trashed again in Trump’s Phoenix screed) helped defeat his party’s attempt to repeal Obamacare — and Trump has already dismissed McCain as a loser for having gotten himself captured during the Vietnam War.
Those who know Trump best are getting more skittish by the day. They’re cats on a hot tin roof. Former director of national intelligence James Clapper recently asked aloud how much longer the U.S. would have to “endure this nightmare” of a Trump presidency.
Clapper is particularly worried that Trump could order a nuclear attack against North Korea in a “fit of pique” — with virtually no one to stop him. Picture it. Instead of tweeting about the sins of CNN at 3 a.m., Trump instead decides to nuke Kim Jong Un. Ivanka is too busy counterfeiting shoes to stop him.
Over the top, you say? Maybe. Hope so. But with this president, the truth may well reside in hyperbole.
One of the more foolish assessments of the Trump presidency is that it is somehow a problem of “American” politics. Think about that for a moment.
This is a president who has threatened nuclear war with North Korea, menaced Venezuela with the spectre of invasion, and recently expanded the interminable conflict in Afghanistan by sending more troops to fight in a war he formerly deplored. Donald Trump is not an American problem. He threatens the world.
And that includes Canada. I would argue that Trump policies have already had a profound — and negative — impact on Trudeau government decisions, with more landmines buried in the terrain ahead.
After President Trump took NATO leaders to the woodshed for not committing enough money to their defence budgets, Canada vowed to increase military spending by an astonishing 73 per cent over the next decade.
It’s funny: I recall Trudeau’s promise during the 2015 election of more funding for the arts, but not a pitch to blow up the military budget. Striking a hideously hollow note, Defense Minister Harjit Singh Sajjan dutifully said the policy was “made-in-Canada.”
Others, including The Guardian newspaper, tied the increase in Canada’s military budget directly to pressure from the U.S — from Donald Trump. Not surprisingly, U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis warmly welcomed the news and passed on his congratulations. Why wouldn’t he? Trump got exactly what he wanted.
And then there is immigration. Trump has made the global refugee crisis far worse by banning immigration from seven Muslim countries, and by cracking down on millions of illegal aliens living in the United States. That’s a big problem for Canada, as we are now seeing.
Since June, 7,500 people have crossed the border seeking “irregular” asylum in Canada. There is now a tent community full of people camping out on the Quebec/New York border. No one knows if the people flow will turn into a flood that overwhelms Canada’s immigration system.
Don’t blame the people moving north. Facing a ban or deportation, why wouldn’t desperate people cab it to Canada and try their luck at the refugee roulette wheel? And it was Justin Trudeau who put out the welcome mat, famously tweeting during last spring’s worldwide refugee crisis that “regardless of who you are or where you come from, there’s always a place for you in Canada.”
And note Donald Trump’s giant footprint on the NAFTA do-over. Trump has already said he will probably cancel the trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. It’s probably standard bullshit from his “art of the deal” reptile brain — but veiled threats have a way of lowering expectations.
A big test is coming for Trudeau; sucking up and calling it ‘diplomacy’ won’t help him pass. Trump is a taker. He wants more manufactured goods, like automobiles, made in the USA. He wants the NAFTA dispute resolution mechanism, Chapter 19, dumped. He wants access to government procurement contracts in Canada and Mexico, but an America First policy at home. And he wants unfavorable merchandise trade deficits with both NAFTA partners reversed.
Donald Trump is easily satisfied … as long as you give him everything he wants, the minute he demands it.
Now the mid-term elections loom in the U.S. A lot of blue collars in the Rust Belt are sweating these days, waiting to see if Trump delivers on his promise of “great new trade deals” for American workers.
Help for everyone may be at hand. Representative Ted Lieu, a Democrat from California, has introduced legislation requiring the presence of a psychiatrist in the White House. Short of that practical measure becoming law, it would pay our leaders to remember that there is only one Donald Trump.
And he makes Mr. Hyde look like the Good Humour Man.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Michael Harris
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