President Donald Trump is facing a foreign policy revolt from Senators. Photo / AP
President Donald Trump is facing a foreign policy revolt from Senators. Photo / AP
A top FBI boss officials discussed using the United States Constitution to remove President Donald Trump from The White House
Andrew McCabe, who was fired from the Trump Administration, made the extraordinary revelations as he confirmed on US television that Deputy Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein also offered to wear a wire around the president.
McCabe spoke to 60 Minutes in the US for an interview ahead of the release of his book, The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump.
Disgraced FBI Acting Director Andrew McCabe pretends to be a “poor little Angel” when in fact he was a big part of the Crooked Hillary Scandal & the Russia Hoax - a puppet for Leakin’ James Comey. I.G. report on McCabe was devastating. Part of “insurance policy” in case I won....
President Donald Trump's domestic policy agenda, to the extent he had one, likely died with the failure to get his big, beautiful concrete wall, reports the Washington Post.
Another president might pivot toward the Democrats and work on an infrastructure bill, but this president's level of incompetence is so high and his credibility so low that deal-making becomes nearly impossible.
I suppose that if he left appropriators entirely to themselves, they could complete it, but barring that, any expensive, complex legislation is likely beyond his abilities.
In such cases where domestic scandal and paralysis threaten a president's reelection, the traditional tactic for presidents is to turn to foreign diplomacy.
With Trump, that means another summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un. However, his chances of accomplishing anything significant on denuclearization are slim to none, even according to his own military adviser.
Meanwhile, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo gets low marks on Capitol Hill (in large part for gilding the lily on North Korea talks and lack of candor, to put it mildly, on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman) and from foreign governments.
The Washington Post reported that Pompeo got snubbed on his Europe trip when our allies sent the B and C teams to meet with him on the Middle East, where he hoped to focus on Iran.
("The agenda has expanded to include discussions on the war in Yemen, the Syrian civil war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Despite the extra items, the two-day conference has meetings only on Thursday, with Wednesday's sole event a welcome dinner," The Post reported. "Pompeo shrugged off the foreign minister no-shows and said he hopes much progress can be made." Uh-huh.)
China? There is no trade deal yet in sight. NAFTA 2.0? That has run into complications. Withdrawal from Afghanistan and Syria?
That has run into bipartisan criticism and has shaken allies, as have most of Trump's moves. Venezuela?
A good outcome - that is, a smooth transition to new elections - isn't out of the realm of possibility, but that will happen only if Trump steers clear and allows his special envoy Elliott Abrams to wield carrots and sticks. (In any event: "Didn't start a war in Venezuela!" is not exactly a crowd-pleaser.)
More often than not, foreign policy has become a staging ground for Congress to flex its muscles.
On Wednesday, on an almost entirely party-line vote, the House passed a resolution on Yemen. In a written statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, praised the "resolution to reassert Congress's long-established oversight responsibilities and limit America's engagement in this horrific war."
It goes to the Senate, where passage is unlikely, but the president's abnormally chummy relationship with the Saudis is bound to come up.
And with regard to the Saudis, Trump and the crown prince aren't out of the woods yet. Trump's refusal to take action on the slaughter of Jamal Khashoggi has infuriated both Democrats and Republicans, as The Washington Post's Ishaan Tharoor explains:
"The end of last week was the final date for the Trump administration to submit a congressional report answering whether the Saudi crown prince was responsible for the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October.
The administration let the deadline pass with little acknowledgment.
North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump are expected to meet for another summit. Photo / AP
"The snub drew outrage on the Hill. Under the terms of the Magnitsky Act - US human rights legislation lawmakers had triggered shortly after Khashoggi's killing - Trump had 120 days to respond to the request and then possibly move to impose further punitive sanctions. Anger over the killing of the Saudi citizen, a contributor to The Washington Post, forged an unusual bipartisan consensus in Congress."
Even without a possible connection between the Saudis and the National Enquirer, the Trump-Saudi relationship therefore remains a negative for Trump.
Finally, Trump faces renewed efforts to sanction Russia. On Wednesday, senators introduced a bill "to increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in response to Russia's interference in democratic processes abroad, malign influence in Syria, and aggression against Ukraine, including in the Kerch Strait." Menendez declared that "willful paralysis in the face of Kremlin aggression has reached a boiling point in Congress," while Trump's usually faithful friend Graham acknowledged that Russia's behaviour, if anything, has gotten worse. ("Our goal is to change the status quo and impose meaningful sanctions and measures against Putin's Russia. He should cease and desist meddling in the US electoral process, halt cyber attacks on American infrastructure, remove Russia from Ukraine, and stop efforts to create chaos in Syria.")
In sum, if you think Trump's domestic accomplishments are thin, take a gander at arguably the worst foreign policy record of any president since Jimmy Carter (and in fairness to Carter, he got tough on the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan while Trump spouts Russian propaganda that the invasion was a defensive move). One hopes that lacking any real wins, Trump doesn't resort to his favourite stunt - creating a crisis and then acting to "solve" the mess he made.
