The Other Problematic Subject Trump Hid
[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]
In this post:
Overview
Russia’s involvement
H. R. McMaster’s observations
Olivia Troye’s observations
~ ~ ~
Overview
Before the September 10th presidential debate, did you notice Trump and his campaign never backed off on the Arlington National Cemetery brouhaha?
Did you notice they actually leaned into their desecration of the cemetery with a campaign event?
The profanement of war dead is a taboo which would have ended other politicians’ campaigns and political careers. Why did the Trump campaign continue so firmly in this direction?
Did you notice how much this offensive behavior sucked up attention from Trump’s other deficits as a candidate and a human being?
Did you notice how much less we were laughing at his campaign after ANC but before Trump’s disastrous debate performance?
The violation of regulations and norms at ANC appear to be redirection: if the candidate and campaign act out badly enough, the subject is changed. The left would stop laughing at him.
Trump’s campaign tried to flip the public’s perspective of the ANC to make Trump the victim. They found Gold Star family members willing to stick their necks out for him to rationalize the offensive behavior. Very DARVO if you think about it; his campaign abused the law, norms, the rights of others, he walked on the graves of war dead for his own benefit, but somehow he’s the victim.
But again, this was and is redirection. What have they been trying so damned hard to hide? It’s something far worse than desecrating a national cemetery for war dead, violating regulations and assaulting a federal employee in the process.
Is Trump responsible for those killed in Afghanistan during his administration and through the withdrawal during Biden’s first year in office because of his negotiations with the Taliban and his subsequent hurried order to withdraw?
Is it because both former Homeland Security and Counter terrorism advisor to Mike Pence Olivia Troye spoke out at the Democratic National Convention decrying Trump’s leadership?
Is it because Trump’s former National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster published a book released within days of the brouhaha at the ANC – a book in which Trump and his White House appear to be unfocused, unserious, and in thrall to hostile foreign nations?
Is it because Troye and McMaster know exactly how much blame Trump personally bears for those Gold Star dead on whose graves he campaigned?
~ ~ ~
Russia’s involvement
Many of you read Marcy’s post about Trump’s effort to hide his attempt to assassinate Mike Pence on January 6. Special Counsel Smith likely has all he needs for prosecution, but Trump doesn’t want his voters to know more about his threats to Pence’s life.
I believe Trump is also trying to hide something more from his potential voters: his role in the losses experienced up to and during the U.S. final pullout from Afghanistan. He may have been badly played by joint efforts by Russia and the Taliban, ultimately damaging the U.S. military’s efforts to depart in an orderly fashion without U.S. troop and coalition force casualties while leaving a functional Afghanistan government behind.
I’m sharing a partial timeline at this link which includes events related to Afghanistan during Trump’s term in office.
One thing stuck in my craw back when we tried to crowd source a timeline about a then-unknown issue an unidentified whistleblower reported about in 2019.
Why the hell was Russia so deeply engaged in the US-Taliban negotiations? It stuck out like a sore thumb to me. Unfortunately the media’s attention was swept away by the revelation of Trump’s attempted quid pro quo with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.
After so many troops had been killed by Taliban, attributed to cash bounties offered by Russia, why was Russia involved in negotiations?
There was push back about Trump inviting the Taliban to Camp David to negotiate a deal – a move which would have legitimized the Taliban – thereby preventing Trump from going through with the invitation.
Did Putin encourage Trump to extend this invitation in order to undermine U.S. foreign policy, making us look weak enough to cave to a terrorist organization?
Why has this issue not been revisited by the media instead of going on and on for years now about Biden’s execution of the exit from Afghanistan?
When talking heads complained Biden should have either refused to honor Trump’s agreement and extend the exit past August 31, did they take into consideration possible traps which may have been set up by then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vladimir Putin should the agreement not be effected as negotiated?
Granted, while Pompeo was negotiating with the Taliban and Russia over the terms of the US’s exit, there had been a little problem with an Iranian missile launch which failed and John Bolton’s departure from his role as Director of National Intelligence. Perhaps the media’s attention was redirected by these events as much as the brouhaha building over a then-unknown whistleblower and their complaint.
And yet after all the tension over Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the subsequent investigations, the apparent inclusion of Russia in the Afghanistan exit negotiations received scant attention.
Why is this not a topic for discussion now, when the guy ultimately responsible for the terms of withdrawal is running again for office?
The same guy who signed off on the agreement having made no effective response to troop deaths after Russian bounties were reported?
~ ~ ~
H. R. McMaster’s Observations
During the September 10 debate, Kamala Harris demonstrated just how easy it is to manipulate Trump. She brought up one of his obvious obsessions and he fell for it like Wile E. Coyote tripping into Road Runner’s Acme-branded holes.
It wouldn’t take much for Putin to do the same thing repeatedly. He’s had plenty of time and resources to learn about Trump’s narcissistic foibles and he’s likely applied this knowledge on a regular basis.
I’ve been reading H. R. McMaster’s latest book, “At War With Ourselves.” I must point out that McMaster isn’t a reliable narrator; it’s not clear if he played a game with the meaning of “collusion” or if he genuinely believed Trump didn’t collude with Russia in order to win the 2016 election.
But McMaster’s recollection of the Trump White House’s toxicity, riddled with internecine drama like Henry VIII or Louis XIV’s court, depicts a weak leader manipulated by many both inside the White House and out.
You can experience the flavor of the problem through Nicolas Niarchos’s review for The New York Times in which he describes how China’s Xi bent Trump over:
As McMaster writes in “At War With Ourselves,” the president could sometimes be kept on the straight and narrow with a clever dose of reverse psychology (Xi Jinping wants you to say this, Xi Jinping wants you to say that). But just as often, McMaster shows Trump to have been an unpredictable waffler who undermined himself to the advantage of his competitors on the world stage.
In November 2017, President Trump visited China on the third leg of a 13-day trip around Asia. It was his “most consequential” destination, McMaster explains. As they flew to Beijing, he warned Trump that Xi would try to trick him into saying something that was good for China, but bad for the United States and its allies. “The C.C.P.’s favorite phrase, ‘win-win,’” he recalls telling his boss at one point, “actually meant that China won twice.”
Trump seemed to hear him, but in the Great Hall of the People, the president strayed from his talking points. He agreed with Xi that military exercises in South Korea were “provocative” and a “waste of money” and suggested that China might have a legitimate claim to Japan’s Senkaku Islands. McMaster, his stomach sinking, passed a note to Gen. John Kelly, the chief of staff: Xi “ate our lunch,” it read.
McMaster described Putin’s effort to influence Trump during the 2017 G20 summit. Putin pressured Trump on shipments of Javelins to Ukraine, the same kind of arms shipments which were a bone of contention during the RNC’s efforts to draft a platform in 2016, and again during the run-up to Trump’s quid pro quo attempt with Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.
To appeal to Trump’s optimistic interpretation of the U.S.-Soviet alliance during World War II, Putin showed Trump a video of Russia’s Northern Fleet salvaging the USS Thomas Donaldson, a 7,200-ton Lend-Lease ship that a German U-boat had sunk in the arctic in 1945, before it could deliver its cargo of Sherman tanks. The idea was to evoke the memory of the United States and the Soviet Union as allies during World War II and to keep alive the pipe dream of conciliation with Putin’s Kremlin as the best way to advance both countries’ interests.
Putin used his time with Trump to launch a sophisticated and sustained campaign to manipulate him. Profilers and psychological operations officers at Russia’s intelligence services must have been working overtime. Even as the meeting stretched into its second hour, Putin did not run out of material. To suggest moral equivalence between U.S. interventions in Latin America and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Putin cited the “Roosevelt Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy declaration by U.S. president Theodore Roosevelt in 1904–5 stating that the United States could intervene in a country’s internal affairs if that country were engaged in chronic wrongdoing.
At the dinner later that evening, as the two leaders squared off for a long conversation, Putin handed Trump a list of ideas for collaboration, including the development of an amusement park near Moscow. I wondered if Putin hoped the list would leak, or if he planned to leak it later, to revive stories of Trump’s failed pursuit of business deals in Russia, feed the Russian collusion narrative, weaken Trump, and divide Americans further. (188-189)
It’s unfortunate for us that McMaster was no longer NSA when Trump met with Putin in Helsinki in July 2018; he might have written about that as he did the 2017 G20. We can only imagine how much worse Putin’s discussion with Trump was in Helsinki if Putin felt he’d achieved some success with his G20 ratcheting on Trump’s weaknesses.
What’s infuriating and frustrating about this text is McMaster’s dismissive attitude about “Russiagate” and allegations of “collusion” which he blames for increasing Trump’s defensiveness on a number of topics – but as already noted, this is what makes McMaster unreliable as a narrator.
And yet McMaster’s conflict about the intimacy of Trump’s relationship with Putin may have been the last straw leading to his termination as NSA.
JUST A few days after Russian assassins deployed the nerve agent in Salisbury, poisoning Sergei Skripal and his daughter, a story appeared in the New York Post with the headline “Putin Heaps Praise on Trump, Pans U.S. Politics.” When I walked into the Oval Office that evening, on another matter, the president had a copy of the article and was writing a note to the Russian leader across the page with a fat black Sharpie. He asked me to get the clipping to Putin. I took it with me. When I got home that night, I confided to Katie, “After over a year in this job, I cannot understand Putin’s hold on Trump.”
News was breaking about the poisoning in England, and I was certain that Putin would use Trump’s annotated clipping to embarrass him and provide cover for the attack. The next morning, I stuck to procedures and gave the clipping to the White House Office of the Staff Secretary, which manages any paper coming into and out of the Oval Office. I asked them to take their time clearing it and to come back to me before sending it to Putin via his embassy in Washington. Later, as evidence mounted that the Kremlin and, very likely, Putin himself had ordered the nerve agent attack on Skripal, I told them not to send it.
I told Trump, “Mr. President, do you remember the article and note you told me to send to Putin? I didn’t send it. Putin would almost certainly have used the note to embarrass you, alleviate pressure over the Skripal incident, and reinforce the narrative that you are somehow in the Kremlin’s pocket.”
Trump was angry. “You should have done what I told you to do, General.” “Mr. President, you can be angry at me, but you have to know that I was acting in your interest.” (308-309)
How often had Trump sent mash notes to Putin during his term in office? Was he sending them even during McMaster’s tenure as NSA but through another contact?
What were the prompts for these missives? Did any exchanges between Trump and Putin out of the public’s eye shape Trump’s agreement with the Taliban and the subsequent withdrawal from Afghanistan?
Did Trump have any exchanges like this which may have led him to take no action as U.S. troops were killed after it was learned Russia offered bounties on our service persons serving in Afghanistan?
Has Trump been sending mash notes to Putin even after leaving office through other contacts?
~ ~ ~
Olivia Troye’s observations
McMaster waited until three years after the U.S. exited Afghanistan to share his experience working in Trump’s White House. Publication date of his book was August 27, 2024 — three days before the third anniversary of the U.S. exit from Afghanistan and the day after Trump and his campaign violated ANC regulations profaning war dead.
Olivia Troye didn’t wait; her speech at the DNC convention this August wasn’t her first public statement about Trump’s foreign policy and general leadership. Two months after she left her role in 2020, she unloaded on the Trump administration particularly on Trump for his narcissistic approach to protecting the nation as the COVID pandemic unfolded.
She not only wrote a pointed Twitter thread but published a campaign video in which she as a lifelong Republican said she was voting for Joe Biden after her experience working in the Trump administration.
She unloaded again ten days before the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan in 2021, in response to ill-informed smears by right-wing mouthpieces, some of whom had been obstructive about the Special Immigrant Visa program (SIV) which should have helped more Afghan allies enter the U.S.
Olivia of Troye @OliviaTroye
🧵There were cabinet mtgs about this during the Trump Admin where Stephen Miller would peddle his racist hysteria about Iraq & Afghanistan. He & his enablers across gov’t would undermine anyone who worked on solving the SIV issue by devastating the system at DHS & State.(1/7)
I tracked this issue personally in my role during my WH tenure. Pence was fully aware of the problem. We got nowhere on it because Trump/S. Miller had watchdogs in place at DOJ, DHS, State & security agencies that made an already cumbersome SIV process even more challenging.(2/7)
I met w/ numerous external organizations during my White House tenure who advocated for refugees & pleaded for help in getting US allies through the process. I got the phone calls & letters as the homeland security & CT advisor to Pence…(3/7)
The system wouldn’t budge, regardless of how much this was argued about in National Security Council mtgs. The Pentagon weighed in saying we needed to get these allies through the process-Mattis/others sent memos. We all knew the urgency but the resources had been depleted.(4/7)
The fear of people across the Trump Admin to counter these enablers was palpable. There were numerous behind closed door meetings held-strategizing how to navigate this issue. The Trump Admin had FOUR years…(5/7)
..Trump had FOUR years-while putting this plan in place-to evacuate these Afghan allies who were the lifelines for many of us who spent time in Afghanistan. They’d been waiting a long time. The process slowed to a trickle for reviews/other “priorities”-then came to a halt.(6/7)
To people like Ben Domenech, JD Vance & others who are making blanket statements & pushing narratives of convenience on Afganistan-especially on the SIV/allies issue-please, just stop. Your comments are uninformed & also hurtful. We see right through you.(7/8)
Grateful for everyone advocating the urgency of getting our allies evacuated out of Afghanistan ASAP & those who are doing everything they can to help. It’s the least we can do for these individuals & it’s a matter of national security. The world is watching.(8/8)
By the time Troye wrote this there were roughly 2300 U.S. troops on each of three shifts protecting the remaining facilities and personnel – a number wholly disproportionate to the number of Afghan fighters Trump’s agreement with the Taliban released from Afghan government detention.
There simply weren’t enough personnel to do everything well, thanks directly to Trump.
There were aggravating circumstances with the Taliban violating the agreement, thanks to Trump.
There was ample frustration trying to help Afghan citizens who’d helped the U.S. thanks to Trump allowing his little racist attack dog Stephen Miller to undermine the exit.
It would be nice if any credible journalist with experience covering defense and active war zones ever asked Olivia Troye if she observed any difficulties added to the withdrawal from Afghanistan by Russia or its proxies, or other hostile foreign nation, in addition to the obstructions created by Trump’s worst minions.
It’d be nice if journalists asked Troye if she ever observed exchanges as McMaster did, between the White House and Russia which were not made known to the public but were not classified.
Taking both Troye’s and McMaster’s observations into consideration, Trump fucked up Afghanistan for the sake of his re-election campaign and possibly ego stroking by Putin, leaving Biden a massive mess to clean up just as he fucked up the pandemic response. In both cases Americans died because of Trump’s fuckery.
And Trump had zero problems kissing Putin’s ass along the way.
~ ~ ~
Once again, the question: which part of this related to Afghanistan did Trump and his campaign believe needed to be obscured so badly they were willing to profane American war dead to that end?
Thank you Rayne for this excellent article. I have thought from TFG’s announcement of the withdrawal that it was absolutely forking stupid to announce your plans in a war so the enemy could prepare an offensive.
Donnie *is* stupid, and easily manipulated into doing what someone else wants – flatter him, tell him how great he is, and you can probably get him to hand over the keys to Fort Knox.
The demand to release 5000 Taliban was equally stupid — shouldn’t have happened until the last US+coalition forces had left the country and an Afghan government stood up which could handle the release.
But I suspect this is exactly what Putin had pushed for, increasing pressure to exit quickly by encouraging attacks on US troops.
And the orange twatwaffle had the gall to stand on US troops’ graves with a thumbs up.
I don’t mean to give the MSM a pass on this, yet I’ve wondered how in hell do you choose what trail to follow when every waking breath Trump takes is planning or carrying out corruption? This is were the GOP has a decided edge-if there is no story create one then pound it into the country’s narrative over and over in committees and on Sunday morning shows.
It was a problem during the duration of US presence that not enough journalism resources were dedicated to covering corruption in Afghanistan — and there was plenty to cover. Had there been more coverage of that regardless of president in the White House, this transition+exit might not have gone as badly.
Excellent post.
Oddly, in all the GOP huffing and puffing about the 13 dead troops at the airport in Kabul,
they’ve flushed this down the Memory Hole:
US soldiers killed in Niger were outgunned, ‘left behind’ in hunt for ISIS leader
– They were part of a largely inexperienced and lightly-armed team.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/us-soldiers-killed-niger-outgunned-left-hunt-isis/story?id=54909240
” …A 300-page summary report will be released to the public, but almost 6,000 pages in the report will be kept confidential, officials have said. …”
It happened in October, 2017.
Rep. Michael McCaul will be holding hearings on it in 3,2,1, … never.
Yup. That was nine months after that botched up raid in Yakla, Yemen.
I’ve forgotten several times now to look and see when Putin began to dispatch Wagner Group to African nations. I’ve wondered if there was a correlation between their presence and difficulties US troops had.
Of course now the US isn’t in Niger at all.
https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/us-military-says-it-completes-niger-withdrawal-2024-09-16/
Disrespecting fallen soldiers is what trump does:
“…President Trump told the widow of one of the soldiers killed in Niger that he “knew what he was getting into,” said U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Miami), who said she was in the car where the phone call was received.
“Myeshia Johnson was on her way to the airport to greet the remains of her husband, Army Sgt. La David Johnson, when she received the call from the commander-in-chief, CBS Miami reports.
” “David was a young man from our community who gave his life for our country,” Wilson told CBS Miami. “He’s a hero. I was in the car when President Trump called. He never said the word hero. He said to the wife, ‘Well, I guess he knew what he was getting into.’ How insensitive can you be?”…”
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-told-la-david-johnson-widow-that-he-knew-what-he-was-getting-into-congresswoman-says/
Excellent post. You echo so many of my thoughts about how Trump betrayed this country over and over again, in plain sight. One questions the intelligence and/or the motives of journalists not to examine more closely his actions, other than to simply “report,” instead of digging more deeply. The superficiality of the media treatment of his administration mirrored, and continues to mirror, the glizt over substance, which represents Trump’s entire persona.
Good that you pointed out the callousness of creating the situation which killed our soldiers while dancing, as it were, on their graves. He should never be allowed near the White House
again.
I see your profanement at Arlington and raise you a step higher, Rayne.
The missing classified documents? Willing to bet the detailed the DoD’s plans to evacuate Kabul, and we’re very specific regarding the security situation.
I don’t think documentation of the exit plan in August 2021 was likely to have existed in January 2021 as a lot changed in that eight-month window.
General security plans may have. Perhaps not all of the details, and likely some changed, but details regarding base security would still have been very valuable.
IMO it’s far more likely ample intelligence was accessible inside Afghanistan which the 5000 freed Taliban fighters used.
Fifty-six military personnel died on active duty during the Trump Administration.
Yet Trump and Trump’s base and Fox News seem only to care about the thirteen military killed under Biden’s watch during the Afghan withdrawal.
But 1.1 million dead from covid is “high survival rate” and “personal choice.”
How does one decide what to put in a timeline when it comes to 2017-2021? When I started to read yours, Rayne, I was only taken back yet again to what a shitshow the administration was from the get-go. (Like, I think I have PTSD from COVID/2020, but to read your timeline, and a few articles from that period, I’m reminded that I was prepared to shelter in place by March 2020.)
So where you have Esper becoming Sec. of Defense? Well let’s go back to how Jim Mattis resigned – and appreciate that Sens. Rubio, McConnell, Graham, and Warner, and Speaker Pelosi all sounded warnings – here’s reporting from the BBC about it.
And then there was a wholly unqualified acting sec’y of defense – Shanahan – from January 1, 2019 to Esper’s confirmation in late July.
No exaggeration – it’s a continuing nightmare – and I think it is only about Trump’s pathology. He needs to preserve his image and part of that is he needs to win no matter the cost. And the unanswered question for me is why more and more people want to layer on orange makeup and lie on his behalf.
Good point about the SecDef roles — I will add the other transitions. I should include Tillerson as SecState as well.
Trump’s entire term was just as you described it, a shitshow.
This is a truly awesome article, and I’m not going to chime in on every smart comment underneath it, because there is so much to say that’s already being said well. But on this point … my impression is that Trump’s management style was like Hitler’s, who told every person under him what he wanted to have happen until it happened, until it finally happened, with no regard for who was ACTUALLY supposed to be in charge of doing what Hitler wanted to have happen.
If you’re broadening the timeline to include all of the Trump accomplices who were at least peripherally involved, you’re going to end up with an awful lot of people who were theoretically responsible for other stuff, but either were sucked in by Trump’s complete lack of delegation skills or sucked themselves in, just to please Fearless Leader.
If you read McMaster’s book you come away thinking Trump is a Hitler-wannabe who instead was used like a meat puppet by whomever would fluff his ego. You might think of those users as accomplices but few of them worked collaboratively in concert. Most of them were simply fighting for their own turf or their own agenda and they constantly yanked on Trump to wield the hollow man that he is to their end.
McMaster is both incapable of fluffing and too indoctrinated in a DOD worldview. It left him ill prepared to deal with a toxic environment where myriad power struggles tugged on his boss who had no real spine and no core values except protecting his ego.
Trump’s lack of core values is the true threat to this country; he parrots what his audience expects of him, like an overlong extension of The Apprentice character he played but now without better producers with strong editing skills. He caves as soon as his ego is pressed too hard, ex. the 180-degree turn on IVF.
Rayne, your heading links at top don’t work.
Three of my neighbors just put up Trump lawn signs. They’re all friends with each other. I’ve never really liked any of them and the signs confirm my dislike. One sign says “Take America Back” and that really gets under my skin. I’m tempted to confront him by asking “Who are you taking America back from? How did that go the last time?”. (He also flies a U.S. flag 24/7 on a tall flagpole in his front yard so I was kind of expecting a Trump sign to go up.)
Thanks for the heads up, the bookmark links are fixed. I’d forgotten to update the post date in each bookmark URL having started drafting this post +13 days ago but only publishing last night.
Every time I see a Trump sign — and I saw plenty yesterday during a brief road trip — I think, “There’s a racist, there’s another racist, and there’s another racist.” It’s like an even more granular Green Book has self published. I’d never pull into the driveway of yard with one of these signs if I needed help in an emergency.
I did see more Harris-Walz signs along the way, a couple DOG FOR 2024 signs, and bless the soul who put out a plain white sign with handwritten black Sharpie lettering which read, “VOTE FOR PEDRO.” I needed the comic relief in Trump country.
Idea for sign: QR code linking to George Conway’s Psycho PAC. Lots of goodies the MAGAs would enjoy.
When considering hiring a local contractor/handyman/plumber etc. to do some work at your house, I think it’s a good idea to drive by their house to look for signs in the yard and bumper stickers on the truck. SAD …… to even think that way, but why support their racism.
Difficult to find a contractor whose politics match but a good start is finding a union shop. The woman-owned electrician I use is unionized.
“He also flies a U.S. flag 24/7”
Which goes against traditional flag etiquette, but it’s probably useless to point that out. Fly them after dusk, upside down, whatever. Shows you’re a patriot.
Per U.S. flag code he has a light on top of flagpole. Ironically, it’s a job killing solar powered light. I should ask him if it was made in CHYNAH!
Please pay more attention to where you post your replies.
Your comment should have been threaded under Matt Foley’s September 30, 2024 9:47 am comment.
As more comments get published, your comment could be misconstrued as related to the post rather than a reply to a comment.
Outstanding post/piece! Your research and attention to detail is outstanding!
This is a very important topic and you’ve exposed it.
thank you for this (and also for EW’s next post) —
this is an influential site, i think all readers here realize that.
the work, researching and archiving and detailing of complex threads and actions, is astounding.
but i’d love to see — no, am getting very uneasy about the failure to see — more evidence of its impact in the wider political and mediascape.
Putin essentially says: deliver the US to me.
what we cannot get to the bottom of, is the kremlin’s hold on trump.
no push back at all, from trump or his followers.
is it psychopathic dreams of global corruption? visions of mountains of gold? unbelievably gross kompromat?
none of that seems to compute in the wider world, despite the incredible amount of research and digging that takes place here at emptywheel. and no candidates seem willing to run on that, either.
This sounds similar to the “suckers and losers” comment that Trump made in November 2018, post-midterms, at the WWI ceremony in France.
Contemporaneous reports were that Trump didn’t want to go out in the rain
Media: Har-dee, har-har, look at Trump
Subsequent reporting: Trump said he didn’t want to go because it’s just “suckers and losers”
Media: look at Trump, despises military and individual sacrifice
Looking deeper: France arranged seating to prevent Putin & Trump from having private meeting. When Trump skipped the ceremony, he was holed up in the hotel. Russian media reported a phone call between Trump and Russia. A “suckers and losers” comment would likely have caused other administration officials to leave the room out of disgust, and a more private conversation to occur
Anyone remember Pompeo exiting a meeting with Lavrov with a weird smile on his face, like he hopes nobody noticed him?
https://archive.is/9b28o
That was at the Munich Security Conference on 2/14/20.
https://www.politico.eu/article/state-department-keeps-quiet-as-pompeo-meets-lavrov-in-munich/
Just 6 weeks after the Soleimani assassination, and 2 weeks before the agreement with the Taliban.
Oof. Just five days before Trump replaces DNI Joseph MacGuire with Rick Grennell. That’s going into the timeline. Thanks — and yeah, yet another goddamned odd intersection of SecDef Pompeo with Russia in the middle of the Afghanistan agreement negotiations.
Last week retired Army general Stanley McChrystal published an op-ed in the New York Times. He thus joined retired USMC generals John Kelly and James Mattis, who made earlier public statements to CNN and The Atlantic. Each of these people had to overcome a great reluctance to make public statements due to a long military tradition of avoiding political issues. The fact that they did go public says a lot.
I agree with Amy McGrath, who said that any military person who signs on to a position in the Trump (or any) administration is making a political choice, so they can’t credibly go back out into the world and claim the military mantle again and refuse to talk about the bad things that went on while they were there.
(she said it better then I am so I hope the point gets across).
I have a particular dislike for HR McMaster. He wrote a few damning things in his book, but in every media interview I saw him on, he was squishy and hedgy about condemning Trump, and even at various points trotted out the old well it worked out the first time so another round won’t be that bad.
McGrath also said as a candidate that she would be a better Senator for the Trump agenda than Mitch McConnell!
She would be a far better senator than that closeted racist turtlehead. But McGrath needs to put in the time running lower level races and developing a posse of followers before she can take on a guy who’s served decades as senator.
Reply to Rayne
October 1, 2024 at 7:09 am
Nope, she actually said in a debate with Mitch that she’d be better at furthering the Trump agenda. And her campaign did this nonsense:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amy-mcgrath-pro-trump-ad-kentucky-ohio_n_5f77a05bc5b649e564b2b758
She doesn’t need to ever run again for any elected office, not even dog catcher. And she probably shouldn’t be seen in public again, either.
Welp. I guess she wanted to kill her political career.
Rayne, putin’s russia and trump’s gop do appear to be joined at the hip. Think Danish PM Mette was vg at describing our present situation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHfzsrpoaw
We got ourselves into this ditch, but now it sure looks like we gotta depend on the kids to get us out of it, and vote the world into the future. Good news is that there’s a lot of kids who can write today. So it’s rap .. and maybe not The Who or Elvis Costello? But the kids are alright, they can write
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wNjBR_jZ9M
It’s not just Afghanistan that stands out, where at least 23 service members died in-country during the last year or so of Convict-1’s administration. As noted above, Biden was handed a ticking time bomb with his hands tied behind his back. Tom Cotton should know better (he was on the CBS show on Sunday), but he’s a lying sack of ordure.
I also think about how Nixon promised a better deal if the RVN rejected the Johnson peace deal. Or, how ‘St Ronnie’ pulled off the hostage deal with Iran to torpedo Jimmy Carter which left F-14s and missiles aimed at me while I was escorting Kuwaiti tankers. Republicans are complete hypocrites about supporting America, they just want power.
Sarah Kendzior observes that Trumps uses scandal to cover up crime, here ably affirmed by Rayne.
If Team Trump are willing to break minor laws to create scandal, what BIGGER crime are they trying to hide? Ugh.
Rayne,
Typo in timeline date:
01/15/20
should be
01/15/21
Oh. I see you have same item again, but with correct date, as last item.
Good work, by the way, Rayne.
I will add this to my list of items I need to fix/add, thanks.
Thanks for shining a light on this.
One quibble, my Acme Dictionary of Important Cartoon Characters says it is “Wile E Coyote” not Wylie Coyote. The poor guy goes through enough without having his name mistaken.
Chuck Jones was a genius.
Thank you, I’ve fixed the name. Shame on me!
“Meep, meep!” Whoosh.
I am learning a lot from this thread; I am a Canadian who got here following McMaster references as I have just read, two of his books.
you have a lot of fascinated and very nervous Canadians following your election. we have a weak and self-serving Prime Minister here, but not, thank goodness, in Trump’s class. a lot of us wonder what the enduring approval of Trump is based on and why it came about.
regarding McMaster’s take on Trump and Russian interference in the first election, McMaster struck me as a pretty honest reporter who said upfront that he would avoid opinion. maybe this was one instance?
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Rayne, this is a really thought-provoking series of events and questions
…and hmmmm…a new Timeline!
Thanks for laying it all out
…and …I may have some additions to suggest.
I almost emailed you to ask it you had any items to add. ;-)
Feel free to make suggestions!