The fallout from the February Friday Fight for the Ages: Oval Office Outrage, between President Donald Trump and guest President Volodymyr Zelensky continues apace with increasingly subtle analysis by various officials who may or may not know better than those currently involved. H.R. McMaster is uniquely positioned to analyze the situation. He covers a lot of ground as a former three-star Lt. General turned “Trump Classic” National Security Advisor, only to be fired in a fury in 2018. Again, he’s been there and done it all with respect to Trump. Thus it was that McMaster, as a CBS analyst, broke down what he sees happening with respect to the American position regarding the Ukrainian war.
McMaster is not impressed and opines that the benefit flows directly – perhaps only – to Putin. According to a report in Mediaite:
“Vladimir Putin couldn’t be happier,” said McMaster, who was fired by Trump in 2018 and is now a CBS News contributor. “Because what he sees is all of the pressure on Zelensky, all of the pressure on Ukraine and no pressure on him.”
McMaster warned that Putin has long understood how to manipulate leaders, and claimed Trump is no exception.
Well, a few comments with the caveat that I have nowhere near the experience McMaster hauls along day to day. First, there’s no doubt that Putin loves the fact that the American government is putting all the pressure on Zelensky and the Ukrainians. It allows Putin as the aggressor to sit back and quietly chuckle while calculating his gains. But I have posited for days now that Putin has to be furious about the Oval Office fight. Putin’s gains work infinitely better if they move along quietly with subtle and vague promises. A fight that lets the world know that the U.S. and Ukraine are done, with such intensity that there’s no coming back, allows the E.U. to move in hard to fill the vacuum, shutting the U.S. out in dictating terms of the peace plan. There is no conceivable way that Europe allows a peace plan as “generous” to Russia as that which would have been put forth by the Trump administration. That must infuriate Putin. Moving on, McMaster explained why Putin and Trump work so well together:
“He appeals to President Trump’s sense of aggrievement,” McMaster said. “And he’s been very successful at it because he’s a master manipulator and one of the best liars in the world.”
Yes. The professionals impress this point all the time. Putin was trained by the KGB in “How to Get What You Want” and is known to do so with deeply concerning efficiency. Any American politician would do well to check his or her responses to Putin with a pool of advisers that have studied him and specific situations for years.
Regardless, Trump – as is well documented, doesn’t take well to criticism, and can be famously thin-skinned. It was only a matter of hours before he lashed out in a fury:
H.R. MCMASTER IS A WEAK AND TOTALLY INEFFECTIVE LOSER!
It never ceases to amaze that Trump will pronounce former employees and nominees as wholly without value as if his decision to hire that person isn’t involved or invoked by the statement. It is nearly comedic. He keeps appointing all these nominees to only later scream that they are some of the worst people on Earth. Trump then moved on to inform Americans that they should be thinking about the border, not Putin. As if we are incapable of holding two thoughts in our heads.
We should spend less time worrying about Putin, and more time worrying about migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our Country – So that we don’t end up like Europe!
Well, the people who voted for Trump hired him on the condition that he patrols the border and oversee immigration to keep out whoever he wants… But they did so with the expectation that he could do other things at the same time. Kind of weird.
Situation normal. Some decent criticism about the fallout from the Oval Fury Flurry, only to result in a president lashing out against former appointees. God, these times can be just so weird.
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So, Donald, if you’re so worried about “migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our Country.” why did YOU authorize the return of those notorious sex traffickers, the Tate Brothers to the United States?
Or do you not care about those particular kinds of individuals as long as they’re WHITE MISOGYNISTIC RACISTS?
Tate isn’t white. His father is African American. Trump.likes him.because he’s even more misogynist than Donnie himself.
i.really need to write an appropriate version of Danny Boy for DJT..
Tate isn’t white. His father is African American. Trump.likes him.because he’s even more misogynist than Donnie himself.
i.really need to write an appropriate version of Danny Boy for DJT..Oops wrong post.
“As if we are incapable of holding two thoughts in our heads.” Trump is an old man with a long career behind him. He has a lifetime of avoiding complicated business deals, creating something huge that required multiple partners and pieces. His intellect has been such to be pretty much limited to one-on-one deals. It was no different when he became President. Multilateral treaties and agreements (NATO is a great example) are simply beyond his ability to understand! But at least NATO and the EU are formal entities in and of themselves even if there are specific clauses in the U.S. treaties with both for specific countries.
Over in the Pacific rim there is the specter of “Chy-ner” (Trump can pronounce that country’s name correctly – he just refused to do so) but it’s a vast area that spans damn near five thousand miles. The multilateral agreements there that might help contain China’s rising power and influence are even more complicated and if THAT’s not enough it all ties in with NATO!
Again, this is simply far more complicated than Trump’s ‘very fine brain’ can handle.
Trump assumes he’s the greatest, most gifted human being ever to walk this earth. So in HIS mind if HE can’t handle two thoughts at the same time then no one else can! It’s really that simple. Look, lots of people have difficulty dealing with more than one COMPLICATED situation at a time. That’s why not everyone is a supervisor at work, much less the big boss or running a major corporation that has lots of interacting and constantly changing parts.
Or a politician. Even a lowly Mayor of a small town has to deal with competing departments and shifting priorities. It only gets more difficult as people move up, to state politics and then the federal level. By the time you get to the Presidency the job is simply too big for any one person to MASTER all the different aspects of the job. Being smart enough and competent enough in evaluating information and decision making is the best we can hope for. And picking good people to handle huge and hugely important tasks who can give sound advice too.
People think they want a President they can “have a beer with” and it’s nice when we get someone who is as a person capable of truly understanding and CARING about the lives of the average voter. Who really can relate to them for a half-hour in a casual setting. But we don’t need Presidents we can have a beer with. “Regular guys” (or someday gals) are the last thing we need. No, we need people of extraordinary intellect and other gifts who are also imbued with a genuine desire to serve this nation and the free world.
Donald fucking Trump is NOT any of that. He is, and has never been in any way fit for so much as Mayor of a small town, much less the Presidency. Name a required trait for the job and Trump hasn’t got it and never has. However, he’s who we’re again stuck with due to a dumbed down and spoiled population which refused to see the truth about him in 2016, and last fall refused to admit they’d been suckered. NOW, with him ignoring the most important reasons they had for voting for him and seeing what’s coming some of them are experiencing buyer’s remorse. Alas, human nature is such we hate admitting we’ve made a mistake or worse got SUCKERED, and Trump suckered just barely enough voters TWICE!
Will more rise up like we’ve seen at Town Halls and keep flooding the offices of GOP congress critters to the point where they are more scared of their voters than Trump? Who knows. But it’s our job to help that frustration and anger among conservative voters grow to the point where we flip Congress next year. The question is how much of the American that once was can be salvaged at that point.
“McMaster warned that Putin has long understood how to manipulate leaders, and claimed Trump is no exception.” Made all the easier when the one to be manipulated is a fanboy. It’s so weird how those in Tangerine Man’s orbit can do all sorts of terrible things but still garner praise from him provided they do not break ranks. But voice a concern over one of his decisions and you’re garbage. Always were garbage, always will be. I have some experience with recognizing garbage having taken it out of my house regularly for years. I even rode a truck several decades back doing some community service for the city of Cincinnati. McMaster is not garbage, he’s more of a sanitary engineer in this case. The garbage is a pyramid centered in the Oval Office and branching out to SCOTUS, Congress, and some newly installed agency heads with DJT at the very top of said pyramid.