When President Donald Trump leaves office on January 20th, America will be a much safer place than it was four years ago. And he did this all by administering tough love to our allies, while offering very trusting friendship to our adversaries. The results of his style of personal diplomacy speak for themselves.
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Relationship With North Korea And Russia
Just think of how far his relationship with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has come. Back in 2016, he was calling Kim “little rocket man,” but soon after they were exchanging love letters. The fact that North Korea continued to enhance its nuclear weapon capabilities should not be allowed to detract from this beautiful friendship.
But our president’s closest relationship with a nominal adversary is clearly the one he has with Russia’s ruler for life, Vladimir Putin. Affectionately known as “Putin’s lapdog” in both Russia and the United States, President Trump has refused to let any of Russia’s hostile actions disrupt this love fest.
Even when Trump learned that Russian agents had offered bounties on the heads of American combat troops in Afghanistan, he resolutely refused to take the bait. Indeed, he disclosed that soon after this discovery, when he and Putin spoke on the phone, the subject never even came up.
Perhaps influenced by his own ghostwritten “The Art of the Deal,” Trump threatened to pull the United States out of NATO unless the other members paid their fair share of the alliance’s total defense spending. This, of course, earned their full respect and sincere friendship.
But most emblematic of his business practices was his treatment of our close military allies in the Middle East, the Kurds. Without advance warning, he pulled out the American troops in Syria who were stationed along the Turkish border, leaving the Kurds to the tender mercies of their long-time enemy, the Turkish armed forces.
Trump's Pursuit Of Making America Safe Again
Just last week, President Trump far outdid himself in his masterful pursuit of making America safe again. As our nation learned about a massive Russian cyberattack on the computer systems of federal agencies including the Pentagon, as well as leading high-tech firms such as Microsoft, he remained uncharacteristically silent, clearly holding his cards very close to his chest.
Mr. Trump, a man whose monumental rages over real or imagined personal slights, could not summon up even the mildest criticism of this dangerous Russian attack on our nation. Where was the very justified rage when it was most needed?
The straw that finally broke the camel’s back was his own Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s very measured summation, which was delivered on Friday: “This was a very significant effort and I think it’s the case that now we can say pretty clearly that it was the Russians that engaged in this activity.”
On Saturday, our commander-in-chief finally set the record straight. In back-to-back tweets, he finally revealed what had actually happened.
"The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)."
In Mr. Trump’s universe, China is a nation that can do no good, while Russia can do no bad.” So even if the vast preponderance of our nation’s cyber-security experts say that Russians, directed by the Kremlin, did the hacking, they must be wrong. And even if his own Secretary of State and his own national security advisors are telling him it’s Russians doing the hacking, he knows they must be getting their information from the “Fake News.”
Please forgive my sugar-coating it. Our nation’s commander-in-chief -- a person with access to the best cyber-security intelligence – is too lazy to bother reading it, or even looking at the pictorial presentations made just for him. So even after being presented with overwhelming evidence, he still cannot identify the nation that has been hacking our nation’s cyber-secrets.
How can the president be so disengaged when the very safety of the nation he has sworn to protect is so clearly in peril? The answer is obvious: the man does not give a crap about anyone but himself. He would sell out not just his political enemies, but even his staunchest allies if he thought that happened to be to his personal advantage.
Spy Games
For nearly all of the past seventy-five years, the Soviet Union – and then, Russia – were our main geopolitical adversaries. One of the most serious incidents occurred sixty years ago, when an American spy plane was shot down by a surface-to-air missile while flying at an elevation of about eleven miles above the Soviet Union.
The pilot, Gary Francis Powers, had been expected to swallow a poison pill rather than allow himself to be taken alive. But acting somewhat less heroically, he parachuted down safely, and was immediately captured and imprisoned.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the heroic Second World War military leader, could not plausibly deny that we not only were spying on the Soviet Union, but were doing so quite provocatively. But he refused to apologize.
A few months later, Eisenhower attended a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, also attended. Everyone was sure something very confrontational would occur between the two men. But what?
Khrushchev did not speak English, nor did Eisenhower speak Russian. When both men were seated, all eyes were on the two of them.
Khrushchev, visibly very angry, took off one of his shoes. And then, very solemnly, he began to bang it on his desk. Eisenhower made a studied effort to ignore this highly insulting gesture.
Surely, Khrushchev had every right to be angry, and he expressed himself accordingly. Eisenhower, however, just sat stoically, not appearing to show any reaction.
The Russian Cyberattack Ignorance
Imagine if, sometime over the next few weeks, Trump and Putin were to both attend a session of the UN General Assembly. Would Trump, who has appeared willfully ignorant about the Russian cyberattack, mount a Khrushchev-like attack on his Russian counterpart? If yes, then what might he do?
Perhaps President Trump would rip open his Kentucky Fried Chicken lunchbox, glance menacingly at Putin, and slowly take out two breaded chicken drumsticks. Then, after gnawing a bite out of each of them, Trump would violently beat the drumsticks upon his desk.
