Monday, April 3, 2017

Trump, Russia, China, and the White House

For those following foreign policy, NPR interviewed Mary Beth Long this morning. She opined that Trump is doing the smart thing by inviting the Chinese for a visit before inviting the Russians.


The strategy is really just common sense: China needs to yank North Korea's chain viz nuclear missile tests, and the administration needs to appear not overly eager to entertain Russia as investigations of election diddling and business dealings continue.

Still, always a comfort to hear that the current administration is doing something rational.

But there's a problem when Trump invites foreign dignitaries to his resort instead of the White House. The kickbacks and advertising Trump Inc. gets from these visits aside--and it's no small aside--the White House is a symbol of the presidency. And that's where state visits should start and end; he can drag them to Florida to look at his gilded property mid-visit if he wants to.

I know it's a little thing and symbolic (but these little symbols often send big unspoken messages in the world of international relations; I know because I watch "Madam Secretary" like everybody else).

Holding official meetings at Mar-a-Lago sends a subtle message that representatives of other nations are dealing not with the U.S., but with Trump personally.

Trump is proud of his iconoclasm, which he often mistakes as a sign that he's smarter than everyone else. But there is a certain stability and gravitas conveyed in meeting state officials at our state buildings and not some toney golf club for rich people.

--Jean Hughes Raber

22 comments:

  1. Memberships at his club in Florida have doubled, now costing $400,000. All those people willing to cough up big dough for a chance to video two heads of state with their phones as our clueless about national security protocols president and staff discuss world security issues by phone in full view of Trump's public, as he did with the Japanese visitor when N. Korea launched its test missle.

    Apparently, China is using Jared Kushner as a conduit to Trump. Kushner has negotiated business deals with China. According to WH leakers, the big power struggle right now in the WH is between the Kushners and Bannon. Jared Kushner has no policy background or knowledge, but apparently his instincts are more moderate than Bannon's. Bannon may be smarter though, and seems to have prevailed in many of the choices Trump has made so far. For example, by withdrawing from the TPP (which would have been good for America and Americans), Trump seems to be ceding Pacific trade to China. According to the news, this was Bannon's doing. Kushner may have been too late to the game on that one. Suddenly Trump is no longer going to destroy NAFTA (also good for America as well as its partners in NAFTA), but simply tweak it. Is that Kushner's influence?

    Stay tuned.

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  2. I hope someone is the anti-Bannon. Good for Kushner if it's him. I read an apt description of Bannon as a "Manichean anarchist". I don't remember who said it, but pretty well describes him. I find it problematic that these apparently very influential advisors to the president are not subject to any kind of outside oversight or approval.
    And I agree with Jean that conducting diplomacy and foreign affairs at Mar a Lago sends the wrong message.

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  3. But they are meeting our KING, not the President of the United States.

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  4. I am glad he is not meeting heads of state in the White House, the peoples house. Of course he despises it, and us. He is Obama's replacement not his successor!

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  5. I completely agree about Trump taking heads of state to his resort ... it's all about him showing off personally.

    Bannon is awful but I'm not sure Kushner is much better.

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  6. I'm trying to think up parallel situations in which a president made a habit of holding state visits outside the White House at a resort that he owned. I know presidents have repaired to Camp David, but that's also state property.

    President Roosevelt held visits at Warm Springs, but he was a sick man, and Warm Springs was more clinic than resort.

    Harry Truman's place in Key West? LBJ Ranch? Hyannisport? Kennebunkport? The Reagan ranch? Maybe some informal visits took place there, but those were not attached to a for-profit resort owned by the prez.

    Am I being unfair to Trump where a precedent for this has already been established?

    It looks like, "Let's play some golf in my private duchy while we decide how to run the world."

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  7. Other presidents occasionally conducted business at their personal homes. None of these homes were profit-making enterprises. They also did not travel to those homes almost every weekend, as Trump has done. When he stayed in town (twice I believe), he went to his golf course in Virginia. He dines out at the restaurant at his hotel. The Trumps now want to build a second hotel in DC.

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  8. There is a sense of continuity with the past with the White House and offices of government. Trump ran as the disruptor, maybe he doesn't want to convey continuity.

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  10. Wherever Trump holds his meetings, is he cutting out the State Department, which is in charge of keeping track of our foreign policy. Presumably they still have a line up of policy experts who could advise and counsel the president.

    Monday's story in the NYTimes indicates that Jared Kushner and the Chinese ambassador to DC have organized the Florida meeting. If North Korea is Trump's big talking point with Xi Jinping, than we should ask whether he has cut out the Secretary of Defense and the NSC from war-and-peace-making policy. Tete a tetes are well and good but not when it comes to the kind of issues Trump is likely to raise.

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    1. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case. Trump is cutting out the staff he needs to consult with, and relying on his son-in-law and WH staff without knowledge or experience. A bit scary, since Trump knows as little about international policy as he did about health care policy. Kushner is no better. The State Dept is still without senior staff and apparently Tillerson does not invite existing staff to meet with him very often. Politico is reporting that Nikki Haley is taking the lead as fspokesperson for the administration rather than State - a very atypical situation.

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    2. The State Department is one of the areas targeted for cutbacks in Trump's proposed budget. At the same time, the Military is being allocated more. Which seems counter intuitive.

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  11. Jean, Camp David is in a rustic area, about 1.5 hours outside of DC. Not to the taste of the man whose first action in the Oval Office was replacing the draperies with new ones - gold. He loves gilt. This is what he said about Camp David.

    “Camp David is very rustic, it’s nice, you’d like it,” Trump said in an interview with a European journalist just before taking office. “You know how long you’d like it? For about 30 minutes.”

    It's near a very small town, not a bit glitzy or sophisticated. Not to Trump's ostentatious taste. A total absence of conspicuous consumption. Now, when he does "business" at the restaurant of his hotel in DC, is he comping the meals or is he charging the taxpayers for them, including his own? My guess - the latter.

    Crystal, Kushner is in way over his head and I have found little in his past history to indicate he is someone capable of negotiating peace in the middle-east, taking the lead with China, AND remaking government to run like an efficient business. Even the latter is beyond him because running a huge government with built-in checks and balances, bears little resemblance to running an inherited real estate mini-empire as a little prince.

    But the DC gossip is that he is less extreme than Bannon in his views. If he can act as some kind of a brake or obstacle to Bannon's worst instincts, it will be better than having Bannon rule with no obstacles. If Bannon could be deposed, along with Miller and Conway (although I don't think she really has much influence on policy), I would sleep more easily at night. As long as Bannon and Miller are there, I will welcome anyone who might slow down their agenda, even the Kushners.

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  12. There are informal gradations for heads of state. The White House is the norm. Camp David is for working sessions where the heads will really work or if we need to be especially friendly. Home, if the home is presentable, is for BFFs. May and Merkel got the White House. The pudgy guy with the cheap Chinese-made neckties is different in this as in everything else. He seems to invite people he thinks have stronger negotiating positions to "Come to my Dacha." Except, as I wrote a while back, its his "friends" who pay to maintain his tacky dacha as a private club.

    The Chinese aren't dumb. They will stay at a pretentious hotel a few miles south of Mar-a-Lago. Their stay will effectively shut down Lantana, Lake Worth and south West Palm Beach for much of the weekend. It's the least we can do, but if we could do more, believe me, he'd make us do it.

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    1. Tom: Does that mean you're on lock-down for the duration?

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  13. Margaret, As the Lantana chief of police said, "In a nutshell I would pack up and go home now, go north as far as you can." No sense going to the beach at Lantana; the Secret Service has tied up 80 percent of the parking spots for the duration.

    Of course, we are complaining too much. The ocean and public beaches will be inaccessible for about 20 miles, and our bigwig can't sit still so people have to be ready to freeze in place when he takes a meeting at his golf course. But as long as you stay well west of the sand and sea, you are allowed to enjoy the sun.

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    1. "Enjoy the sun"... Looking out your living room window?

      "80 percent of the parking spots?" Sounds like the Trumptidumpties are gearing up for a Nuremberg Rally.

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  14. So the news this afternoon is that Trump is less divested of his biz interests than some thought. He still gets to raid the enterprise, and Boy Eric says he will be sending Dad quarterly reports. Couple that with the state visits at Trump properties, and the whole thing starts to look like he's meeting foreign governments as the head of Trump Inc. instead of the U.S.

    My hope is that he'll feather his nest with enough sweetheart deals that he won't bother to run again in four years.

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  15. Jean, I never thought Trump was divested. He didn't even bother really lying about it. He appears to believe that the rules don't apply to him, and so far he's gotten away with it. I don't think he'll run again in four years, because he's bored with it already. But four years is enough time for his minions to do plenty of damage. If he gets impeached and Pence is in, a lot of the minions will still be around.

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  16. Me neither, but Raber thought that my theory about him using the presidency for financial gain seemed "far fetched." That'll teach him to wave off my hunches.

    Impeachment is a happy pipe dream, I think. But I agree Trump he is bored, his head is not in the game, and he is not in great shape and couldn't take the job until he's 78.

    His age is on our side.

    Trump is utterly irreligious, worshipping at the altar of Mammon. Pence is a culture warrior and theocrat. I expect that if he did become prez there would be a lot of changes in outlook and personnel.

    Very different but equally bad.

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  17. RE: Jared Kushner
    Andy Borowitz, the New Yorker's satirist (and not-the-news-guty) has this info on Kushner's preparation for the trip to Iraq:

    "Jared Kushner Says He Read Up on Middle East During Minutes Waiting for Ski Lift"

    http://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/jared-kushner-says-he-read-up-on-middle-east-during-minutes-waiting-for-ski-lift?mbid=nl_040417%20Borowitz%20Newsletter%20(1)&CNDID=24804624&spMailingID=10755552&spUserID=MTMzMTgyNjAzNjc3S0&spJobID=1140288257&spReportId=MTE0MDI4ODI1NwS2

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  18. E.J. Dionne, one of the few people I'd trust with the firing codes for a gigawatt space laser, has an article about Trump and the Russians and investigations thereof. While I think that the West was overplaying its hand with the Russians regarding the Ukraine, Putin is a damned autocrat and a climate change LOVER. He thinks global warming is a good idea and there's the related 500 gigabuck deal with the oil companies. I think we can cool down the Ukraine while not capitulating to Putin on everything else. And the motivation of the President SHOULD be the welfare of the US and mankind, not who knows what dark relationship with an autocrat.

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