The content of those leaked Trump phone calls (including New Hampshire, that “drug-infested den”)
What struck me initially about the leaked Trump phone calls published by the WaPo was the fact that they were even leaked and published in the first place. So till now, my posts on the subject were all about that.
But there’s something else about the whole brouhaha that I find interesting: the content of the phone calls and how it’s being treated by the press and the Trump opposition. The calls’ content has widely been taken as proof that Trump is just as stupid as they always thought he was—or even more stupid—and just as hypocritical.
I didn’t read the full transcripts. But some of the excerpts I saw quoted as being the best evidence of Trump’s terrible Trump traits didn’t seem that way to me at all. In fact, considering that I’ve never been a Trump fan and was a very active Trump critic for a long, long time (basically, for the entire primary year), I found them somewhat reassuring.
Although a Trump critic for a long time, I’ve never considered Trump either an idiot or a buffoon. I’ve always argued that he’s smart, although the very opposite of an intellectual (and I don’t care whether a president is an intellectual or not, because I see no particular advantage to that trait in the presidency). In the transcripts of these phone calls, Trump comes across as fairly wily, and certainly no dummy. If you see the phone calls as an exercise in schmoozing plus attempts at persuasion and cajoling with a soupé§on of warning and threat thrown in (and that’s how I see them), then they’re not half bad, although not especially effective. Allahpundit (who’s also not been a Trump fan) nevertheless observes:
Trump doesn’t even concede that Mexico won’t pay for the wall. The most damning thing he says is the bit about how the wall is the “least important thing that we are talking about” but politically the most important. That implies that he sees the wall less as an essential deterrent to illegal immigration than an essential component of his strongman persona ”” which it is, of course. He can tolerate an arrangement in which Mexico doesn’t pay for it, or all of it. But telling the press that they won’t? Nuh uh. That’s bad for his image…
If Trump had told Turnbull that he privately had no problem with accepting the refugees but had to put on a tough-guy facade for his base, that arguably might have been newsworthy enough to justify a limited leak. The president doesn’t believe in his own immigration policy! But he sounds here exactly like he did during the campaign. He doesn’t want the refugees, warning at one point that they could produce another pair of Boston bombers, but he agrees to accept them reluctantly to show that the U.S. will honor its commitments. The only “news” is that he did in fact have a pissy conversation with a close U.S. ally. Which we’ve known about for ages, even though Trump denied it on Twitter at the time.
Allahpundit adds:
[Trump] also told Pena-Nieto regarding illegal drugs coming into the U.S. from Mexico, “I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den.” Whether that description is accurate or not, he, er, did not win New Hampshire last year…
No, Trump didn’t win the general election in that state—Hillary won by a very small margin (.3%)—but he won the NH primary by a huge margin. That was a big big deal at the time, and gave him his very first primary win after a defeat in Iowa. New Hampshire made him legit, as it were, and if he’s bragging about his primary win there, it would make a lot more sense than talking about winning (or losing) New Hampshire in the general, where its paltry four electoral votes hardly matter.
Allahpundit questions whether that description of New Hampshire as “a drug-infested den” is accurate or is hyperbole. But although “den” is perhaps a bit colorful, it is accurate in terms of the seriousness of the drug problem that has come to plague the state.
Predictably, New Hampshire’s Democrats are up in arms about what Trump said about their state. But let’s take a look at some facts:
According to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, New Hampshire ranks No. 2 in the nation behind West Virginia for the number of opioid-related deaths relative to its population. New Hampshire also ranks No. 1 in fentanyl-related deaths per capita…
From February to June 2016, the opioid-related emergency department in New Hampshire saw its visits increase by a whopping 70 percent.
New Hampshire Manchester Fire Department Chief Daniel Goonan told the publication that about half of his job is now dedicated to dealing with the opioid outbreak.
And let’s take a trip back in time, shall we? In January of 2016, a month before the NH primary, PBS and some NH Democrats were singing this tune:
JUDY WOODRUFF: But, first, say New Hampshire, and most people in the political world think first-in-the-nation primary, coming up February 9.
But, these days, there’s another, more disturbing distinction for the Granite State, the expectation that last year’s fatal drug overdoses will hit a record 400 deaths.
Today, presidential candidates and state political leaders gathered for a forum to tackle addiction and the growing heroin crisis.
I traveled to New Hampshire last month to get a firsthand look at the epidemic and its repercussions…
GOV. MAGGIE HASSAN, D-N.H.: The opioid epidemic is really our most pressing public health and public safety issue right now.
DONNA SYTEK, Former New Hampshire House Speaker: Drug abuse has always been a challenge for New Hampshire, but, with the opioid crisis, it has reached epic proportions.
There’s much much more, including the startling statistic that among NH’s population of about 1.3 million people, 100,000 are in need of drug treatment, and the state is next to last in the nation in terms of access to help.
“Drug-infested den” doesn’t seem like such an inaccurate description.
The context in which Trump made the remarks published in the WaPo transcripts about New Hampshire was in speaking to Mexican president Nieto about the problem of drugs supplied by Mexico:
“We have a massive drug problem, where kids are becoming addicted to drugs because the drugs are being sold for less money than candy,” Trump said. “I won New Hampshire because New Hampshire is a drug-infested den.”
That’s basically the same opinion of New Hampshire’s drug woes that Trump demonstrated during his 2016 campaign when speaking in that state and elsewhere. This was from January of 2016:
Donald Trump got personal on Friday in answering a father’s question about stopping the rampant heroin epidemic.
“I lost my son two years ago to a heroin overdose,” a man told Trump at a rally in Urbandale, Iowa, his first event after Thursday night’s debate.
Trump asked whether the man was from Iowa; he responded that he was from Owego, New York, an upstate town in the center of the state that has been no stranger to the influx of heroin in recent years.
“Well, you know they have a tremendous problem in New Hampshire with the heroin. Unbelievable. It’s always the first question I get, and they have a problem all over. And it comes through the border,” the GOP presidential candidate said. He then repeated his most famous pledge: “We’re going to build a wall, number one, we’re going to build a wall, and it’s going to be a real wall.”
And here’s Trump speaking in Farmington, New Hampshire shortly before that state’s primary:
Speaking to a capacity crowd of 1,000 at Farmington High School, Trump said his signature proposal, to build a wall across the country’s border with Mexico, would stem the flow of illicit drugs into the state.
“The question I get just about number one when I come up to New Hampshire: the drugs that are pouring in,” Trump said. “They’re coming across the Southern border and we are going to stop it.”
Three days before the primary, Trump was hammering away at the theme:
Donald Trump on Saturday again vowed to build a wall along the Mexico-U.S. border — this time arguing that it would help stem New Hampshire’s “drug epidemic.”
“New Hampshire has a tremendous drug epidemic,” Trump says. “I am going to create borders. No drugs are coming in. We’re going to build a wall…”
Shortly before the general election, Trump was still hammering away:
Trump said he specifically heard concerns about the drug epidemic from residents in New Hampshire when he was campaigning during the primary.
Trump said the state holds a special place in his heart because it handed him his first victory.
Trump told the crowd that “New Hampshire, more than any other place, taught me about the flow of drugs into this country. I never knew it was so bad.”
Trump noted his shock at the state’s drug issue given its beautiful scenery.
“You look at the beautiful little roadways, lakes and trees, and everything is so beautiful, the trees, you say, how could they have a drug problem here, it doesn’t fit,” he said.
“If I go all the way, we are going to stop the inflow of drugs into New Hampshire and into our country,” Trump said.
In Trump’s remarks to Nieto, he was completely consistent with his remarks during the campaign. People are incensed either because they forgot, or because they want to pretend to forget because it suits their purposes. To me it was obvious he was talking about a win in the primary, not the general—do people really think he has no idea which states he won in the general? The primary was a big big deal to Trump, and it’s inextricably tied into the state’s drug problem, which is inextricably tied into his talk about Mexico and the wall.
Oh, why do I care at this point? Over and over I find myself in the somewhat odd position of defending Trump. I absolutely hate what the MSM is doing right now, not only on the level of ignoring national security concerns, but also on the level of spreading misleading and manipulative propaganda. And yes, I know that this has been going on for a very long time.
There must be a law against using stolen documents. I seem to recall a case where a man was sued by his former employer when he left the company and took client lists and information with him to his new company.
There must be a law against using stolen documents.
Ray: I’m sure there is but it doesn’t seem to apply to major media anymore.
Dan Rather and 60 Minutes used obviously forged documents against Bush as a September Surprise in the 2008 election. There is a a law against forging military documents and it’s a felony to do so. Knowingly enabling and facilitating fraud makes one as guilty as the originator of the fraud.
But nothing like that happened. CBS ran an internal investigation, Rather and Mapes were eventually let go.
Thank you for that helpful background and clarification neo.
It takes a commitment to stupidity to ignore the obvious truism that something that cannot stand upon its own merits and must be lied about is by definition, a fatally flawed rationale.
Neo, I’m right there with you. Trump can’t possibly do anywhere near the damage Obama did to this country. I’m still hoping when the dust settles that Trump will actually accomplish the things he ran on.
Who would have thought the Trump Administration will be the most transparent Administration in history.
Ha! Good one Dave.
During the Hillary email crime spree revelations, it was pointed out that per State Department instruction, ALL private communications with heads of state including diplomats are to be considered CLASSIFIED, whether marked so or not.
But of course, Hillary hit head and claims to have forgotten 100% of that training, and Comey bought that story.
Later James Comey took his memo recounting his private conversation with president Trump home with him as a private citizen, no longer with the FBI. A theft of a gov. work product. Then he transferred the memo to a friend and the media, which is a felony mishandling of classified material.
That someone in the media accepts and prints the Trump phone call is legal because of freedom of the press. The person who transferred it to them committed a felony.
In Naval Aviation we used to have an event called a “safety stand down”. All flight operations would be cancelled, usually for a day, for an in depth review of procedures and other safety related matters. It was as much a means to focus as anything.
Trump needs to call a government stand down, for as long as it takes to either ferret out the leaks or put the fear of the Devil in those who are leaking. (I think we could do without government operations for as long as it takes. It might actually be beneficial.)
Back to the safety, stand down. Ironically. I was CO of a squadron, and we were very successful, winning awards for operational efficiency and safety. (Mostly do to the hard work of my predecessor). So one morning as I made the lengthy, and quiet, commute from our little horse farm (that’s a stretch) to work, I thought “we should do a stand down. Things are going too smoothly, beware of complacency. I should announce one as soon as I get in.” I didn’t, and it is not hard to guess the next chapter. Fortunately no casualties, but the taxpayers lost an airplane; and the squadron record was tarnished. Do it Mr Trump.
Dave, I was just watching Sessions announce a crackdown and realized that meant that there was no current ongoing investigation into leaks. That some leaks were tolerated without the vindictive hunts suca s under Obama. Transparency indeed.
Nobody is talking about the contents of the conversation, which leads me to believe that the purpose of publishing them was to prove that they could.
Either the purpose is to goad Trump into a foolish action, or to humiliate him that their agenda can’t be stopped.
Matt_SE:
Actually, a lot of people are talking about the New Hampshire remark.
But I agree that they also wanted to prove they could do it. “They see you when you’re sleeping, they know when you’re awake….”
Sessions could redeem himself and his reputation buy going after the leakers who should be easier to find than many others. He also should go after the FBI liars about the Clinton/Lynch meeting last summer.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2017/08/comeys-fbi-lied-about-lynch-clinton-meeting.php
(and I don’t care whether a president is an intellectual or not, because I see no particular advantage to that trait in the presidency)
Non-intellectuals are far preferable to intellectuals when it comes to political office. Intellectuals are responsible for most of the self-defeating policies that have saddled this country, and in point of fact the few intellectuals we’ve had in the Oval Office were among the worst presidents we’ve ever had (Wilson and Obama).
Who would have thought the Trump Administration will be the most transparent Administration in history.
ayyy
Hard to be Hitler when Goebbels and Goering keep leaking all your plans to the press.
I m in N H and the dems who were wringing their hands at the lack of funding & interest in the problrm, we’re oh so confident that Hillary was gonna zero on on the problem & now that Trump has called it what it is, he is so awful to these very same pols. Stunning hypocrisy.
“It’s not what it ever was, it was really never what it ever was.” What the hell do we want, we elected Trump to not be Hillary who knew how to work Washington and he does not work Washington, either by choice or default.
Out nation is in the beginning of a tailspin ‘where and aircraft starts a horizontal spinning that eventually is unrecoverable however, if power is put on and the nose pushed down and other stuff that does not feel right most pilots could recover but when they played it safe they ended up dust in the dirt. Don’t know if that makes sense to others but I think that Trump being a strange, out of the box, loud, boorish goober might be the best thing for our nation to pull us out of the go along and get along best decisions according to the media.
His conversations mostly reflect a decent guy trying to get a handle on the job and indicating stuff he would like to see and do. These things don’t mesh up with the main stream, good old girls & boys in D.C. Oh well, too bad, so sad and Trump might not even last his whole term as they pile on him and try to take down family members he has brought on board.
Once more as this plays out, the cards are dealt and the hands will be played we will see if the special council can dig up and leak enough dirt to gum things up. I have a feeling it will get real creepy, foggy and appear down right damning as they uncover all of the deals with Russians and others making money over the years.
I kind of feel sorry for Trump however at the same time he tried out and made it to the big leagues where they hit hard and run fast so it is up to him to win or fall depending upon how the cards are played. Better men them him have been shredded in the D.C. Chipper Shredder and more will be eaten in the future while others glide and slide on their good looks, charm and connections.
It is too bad the future of our nation is determined by these seemingly trivial acts but that has been the history of nations perhaps since the beginning of civilizations. Things happen and little things like the leaks become tipping points. At least we know for sure that most all the D.C. people were ready to have Hillary and had no idea what to do with a Trump presidency.
We were headed down the drain ever so fast and maybe Trump being Trump will slow that down and give others who are really conservatives a chance to save our nation as time goes by.
huxley Says:
August 4th, 2017 at 4:56 pm
There must be a law against using stolen documents.
Ray: I’m sure there is but it doesn’t seem to apply to major media anymore.
Dan Rather and 60 Minutes used obviously forged documents against Bush as a September Surprise in the 2008 election. There is a a law against forging military documents and it’s a felony to do so. Knowingly enabling and facilitating fraud makes one as guilty as the originator of the fraud.
But nothing like that happened. CBS ran an internal investigation, Rather and Mapes were eventually let go.
* * *
And then they made a movie extolling their own virtue, and called it “Truth”. I trust you have read PowerLine on that little faux pas.
However, when you’ve lost The Atlantic…
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/10/truth-a-terrible-terrible-movie-about-journalism/412036/
“Late in the movie Truth, the former 60 Minutes Wednesday producer Mary Mapes (played by Cate Blanchett) offers a Big Speech about the state of journalism, decrying the fact that all that people want to read or watch on television these days is “conspiracy theories.” The irony apparently lost on her (or at least on the writer-director James Vanderbilt) is that she makes this charge while she herself is in the midst of presenting a conspiracy theory.”
…
“The movie’s peculiar effort to lionize a scoop while also admitting it was likely based on false evidence is captured immaculately in its Wikipedia entry, which was presumably authored by someone involved with the production (forgive the lengthy excerpt):”
…
” It’s not hard to see the good–perhaps even excellent–movie that could have been made on this subject: one that had some distance from its protagonist, one that offered alternative points of view, one that presented Mapes not as an embattled hero but as a tragic cautionary tale. Unfortunately, that is not the movie that Vanderbilt chose to make.”
MollyNH Says:
August 4th, 2017 at 11:41 pm
I m in N H and the dems who were wringing their hands at the lack of funding & interest in the problrm, we’re oh so confident that Hillary was gonna zero on on the problem & now that Trump has called it what it is, he is so awful to these very same pols. Stunning hypocrisy.
* * *
Homeless people are only a problem when Republicans are president (and the media ignores a great deal that was done to help them by GWB).
AIDS must be dealt with immediately and compassionately (but if you are a Republican president making significant progress in Africa to curb its toll — crickets).
And I recently saw a whining story about Trump’s motorcade by people who had no problem with Obama’s megamilliondollar travels.
“Stunning Hypocrisy” has been the Democrats party slogan since at least Bill Clinton’s time, if no earlier.
Sean Says:
August 4th, 2017 at 11:16 pm
Who would have thought the Trump Administration will be the most transparent Administration in history.
ayyy
Hard to be Hitler when Goebbels and Goering keep leaking all your plans to the press.
* * *
Actually, all three were on the same side.
The press believes itself to be Bonhoeffer and Canaris.
If that was, indeed, who they were, we might possibly view the leaks with more approval.
But Trump isn’t Hitler, and they aren’t the Good Guys.
But you are right about the transparency.
However, people who live in the glass house along with the President probably shouldn’t throw too many stones.
Matt_SE Says:
August 4th, 2017 at 8:06 pm
Nobody is talking about the contents of the conversation, which leads me to believe that the purpose of publishing them was to prove that they could.
Either the purpose is to goad Trump into a foolish action, or to humiliate him that their agenda can’t be stopped.
* * *
I don’t know what the leakers were intending; it could indeed be one of those two options or both simultaneously.
However, one of the iron laws of unintended consequences is that there are always more paths than the two forks of the dilemma that are most apparent.
I think the backlash from these unwarranted, inconsequential, and obviously illegal leaks (among others) has begun to disturb enough on the Right and the Left that a tipping point will be reached on accepting them as “business as usual and more so because.. Trump” — because it leads to unsettling precedent when the Dems get back in office.
(I was going to write “back in power” but that’s the problem now, isn’t it: they aren’t in office, but they have power over the people who are).
Dave Says:
August 4th, 2017 at 6:46 pm
Who would have thought the Trump Administration will be the most transparent Administration in history.
* * *
Sorry Dave, I didn’t see that Sean was quoting you.
Credit where credit is due.
Oldflyer Says:
August 4th, 2017 at 7:09 pm
.. I thought “we should do a stand down. Things are going too smoothly, beware of complacency. I should announce one as soon as I get in.” I didn’t, and it is not hard to guess the next chapter.
* * *
Most times, in my experience as in yours, those little nudging voices should be heeded. Whether instinct or inspiration comes to the same in the end.
* * *
OldTexan Says:
August 5th, 2017 at 12:46 am
…
It is too bad the future of our nation is determined by these seemingly trivial acts but that has been the history of nations perhaps since the beginning of civilizations. Things happen and little things like the leaks become tipping points. At least we know for sure that most all the D.C. people were ready to have Hillary and had no idea what to do with a Trump presidency.
We were headed down the drain ever so fast and maybe Trump being Trump will slow that down and give others who are really conservatives a chance to save our nation as time goes by.
* * *
Sad that those DC people included a large contingent of the Republicans.
Old guys are on a roll here.
Is there an OldTexasFlyer in the house?
Time to re-rename the Confederate Air Force, maybe?
AesopFan: You link an interesting, surprisingly honest Atlantic article on the Rathergate movie. But the following comments were discouraging.
Many commenters, presumably liberal, are still riding the merry-go-round ponies of “Never proved to be forged,” “Fake but accurate,” and “Those memos could have been reproduced on 1970s equipment.” All fallacious.
Back then (2004, not 2008 — my bad) I followed Rathergate closely and debated on a progressive forum which was my online home at the time.
Well, I beat my opponents like gongs in the debate, with humorous panache even.
They did not care for that. They organized a group of people offline to harass me. Eventually I left because it wasn’t worth it.
I didn’t know about SJWs then. But I was learning the liberal commitment to free speech and debate had changed in the 21st century.
Having only read a few snippets of the transcripts, my takeaway from them is that Trump isn’t quite the Master Negotiator we’d been led to assume, or at least he’s not as good at negotiating with fellow heads of state as he is with parties less powerful than himself. But that’s not necessarily unexpected, he had no political experience when we elected him.
Trump isn’t quite the Master Negotiator we’d been led to assume… — Sean
And that’s OK with me. I’ll happily settle for that as opposed to a President (Obama) who actively negotiated against American interests.
And that’s OK with me. I’ll happily settle for that as opposed to a President (Obama) who actively negotiated against American interests.
Obama got carried away by his own hype, with predictable results.
But the transcript makes Trump look a bit more supplicating than I would have expected. “Please, stop saying you won’t build the wall, it’s going to make me look bad.” That’s not what you want to hear your president say, and that’s why the transcript was leaked.
I was led to believe he was literally Hitler and this is not how Hitler negotiated.
err *pay for the wall
On intellectuals in the “real world:” intellectuals, by definition, follow a thought or an idea through its logical/rational conclusion. They stay on track. They are consistent. You can follow their thought. Sometimes you can predict what they will say. They provide a background for what you already believe–whgether it is consistent with what you think is correct/ood or consistent with what you think is false/bad. Paradoxically, intellectuals make life simple. Things are oh, so clear.
Then along comes Trump and in one of these phone calls on which Neo reports he says, “yes, we will build a wall, and it will be a real wall.” Now, where did that “It will be a real wall” come from? Was it necessary? It is a Trumpism. Trumpism: a thought comes to mind and you blurt it out, and then another thought comes to mind and you blurt out that one. Grammar? Rationality? Neither leads the utterances. Sometimes, a new thought blurts out and he’s off on that. A rationalist would call it a tangent, and disturbing. If you are grammatically or rationality bound, you find yourself “waiting” for him to get back to finish what he promised to say a sentence or two back.
If you prefer the simple world of the intellectual, you are appalled. How did this thought evoke that thought? Where is the rationale? In the Trump mind there is no rational; there is only “what’s happening.” Sparks send off tentacles and they might ignite this or that and then, unexpectedly, there you are “over there” in that territory.
Do we think life is like that, too? Things are interconnected in mysterious ways. Intellectualism makes it seem that life is rational. Meantime, symbols clang and bang and and hide and reveal things reach us at deep levels.
Who is the simpleton here? Does life follow rationality or does life evolve within a subtler complexity?
Palin did something similar, but in her own fashion. Her grammar was unusual. It was not wrong; it was unusual. She’d get herself down some grammatical rabbit hole and then to crawl back up and out, she’d use whatever twist was required to get back up to where the period goes. It would be a challenge to diagram her sentences, but you could. If you hated her, you got lost in contempt after maybe the second comma or dash.
Intellectuals avoid the “real world:” too complicated. Their mission is to simplify. BO’s foreign policy advisor was a few years out of the University. Intellectuals HATE a Palin or a Trump because they allow their brains to come from how they see things from right here and now, where they are, mid-sentence, rather than from a “theory.”
Brains jump around, like electrons they actually are in this “glom” called “real world.” The intellectual likes to pierce through the “glom” with a sword which they picked up elsewhere other than “the now.” This ability is of same DNA as conveys the belief that you can engineer human nature.
This is not to say we don’t hunger for step by step detailed plans of what Trump has in mind but we ought not to hold our breaths for that, for what plan is ever executed according to its initial steps? Plans operate like brains: mixed planned and unplanned steps.
Remember baseball: “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice; but in practice, there is.” ~ Yogi Berra.
MSM: desperate to prove that they are the vanguards of fair reporting after being called fake news, but at the same desperate to search for evidence that Trump (or any non Dem.) is a mean, mean man.
he says, “yes, we will build a wall, and it will be a real wall.” Now, where did that “It will be a real wall” come from? Was it necessary?
Yes, it was necessary. There’s been pressure to settle for a “virtual wall”, basically a string of motion sensors and cameras. Cheaper and far less effective than a physical barrier. Trump is saying we will have an actual wall, not a cheap, insubstantial substitute that pays lip service to the concept of border security.
MHollywood: Brilliant observation. Trump is perfectly imperfect. (As are we all.) Life is what happens when you had other plans – messy, irrational, and unpredictable. Intellectuals don’t want to deal with that world. They believe it can be simply explained and organized. In their ivory tower all is known. They forget about the unknown unkowns and the Black Swans.
Marijuana is not a gate way drug because everything that defiles the holy temple is a gateway to spiritual contamination and thus possession.
Once the Watcher half of the demon spirits inhabits a human body, which they were forbidden from being incarnated into, they seek the pleasures of the flesh which they were denied. This often overrides the well being of the hosts themselves. But once the hosts are taken over by the parasites, they can try to quit, but it won’t let them.
J.J. thank you.
Trump is perfectly imperfect.
J.J.: That’s what I wonder.
In 1945 Truman was no one’s idea of a perfect president. FDR had his faults, but he was supremely presidential.
Truman was a failed haberdasher from the Pendergast machine in Missouri who became VP because the previous guy, Henry Wallace, seemed like a quasi-Red and was.
But by God Truman dropped A-bombs on Japan, then stood up to the Soviets and to Gen. MacArthur. He was a remarkable president.
I still have ample reservations about Trump, but he could be our time’s Truman.
First they’ll need a trade war with Russia. The Demoncrats are the American war party, so the chances are high that somebody, somewhere, will get into a war with the US.
Trump’s been so many things at the top already: businessman, sportsman, lady’s man, father, builder, military school kid, contributor, TV star, entrepreneur, keeper-of-hair, jokester, college grad, clean liver, winner, and New Yorker. He hasn’t *fully* been President yet, but he’ll get there. His love of country is solid; their hate is not as strong as his love.