Right now, Trump still has too many powerful defenders for him to face a
political or legal reckoning, but he is getting seriously frustrated with the political
crisis he has himself wrought, and wants desperately to ‘change the channel’ to
distract attention from his manifest troubles. And when he is on the defensive, Trump lashes
out.
There has been an ongoing debate amongst Trumps critics about whether he
is a dangerous, vengeful authoritarian or simply an incompetent narcissist. As I and
others have noted, this is a false dichotomy. Trump has both authoritarian tendencies and
is a politically inexperienced and inept, profoundly ignorant, arrogant and narcissistic,
man. So far, Trump’s character traits
have worked against themselves to produce the chaotic and amateurish spectacle
we have seen over the past few months. His
worst impulses (and those of his ideologues) have been contained, but lasting
damage has also been done.
So far, his efforts to quash the investigations into his 2016 campaign
and of his advisors, like Michael Flynn, have
backfired and made Trump’s potential legal position worse. Lashing-out further at the FBI or the US
intelligence agencies would be even more counterproductive – although this is
not to say Trump won’t do so, unless someone disables his Twitter account, he
probably will. But there are multiple
reports about Trump’s sour mood and a
Whitehouse staff too shocked to be able to function.
Trump is about to go on his first international trip as president. He had reportedly wanted this trip to be a ‘reset’
in Washington after the Comey firing.
Now, after the intelligence sharing with Russia story, this trip will be
overshadowed by those allegations, and that
particular cloud will follow him around the world, made worse by the fact
that US allies are now even more wary of a US president willing to give out
intelligence to a main adversary on a whim.
Trump also promised to nominate a new FBI director by the end of this
week. If that nominee is not immediately
acceptable to both the Democrats and Republicans – and a partisan political
figure won’t be – there will be even more political backlash in Washington.
The bottom line, the next few days are not likely to get any better for
a Whitehouse
that feels under siege and overwhelmed. Yet, we know that Trump’s real strength lies
in his instinct for self-preservation (especially at the expense of others),
usually by counter-attacking his adversaries in a moment of crisis – something he
learned from his mentor, the McCarthyist
lawyer Roy Cohn. Consequently, Trump
right now is even more highly susceptible to whatever crazy is suggested to him
by his advisors.
And a real distraction from the furore in Washington could be obtained
using some of the tools at the disposal of an amoral, unhinged president. He could pick a new domestic fight; or
threaten a country with a trade war. But
an international crisis, more squarely within the president’s realm, especially
if it involves military action, is guaranteed to provide the kind of national
distraction Trump now desperately needs.
Trump learned the power of this kind of distraction when he ordered
cruise missiles fired at an airbase in Syria.
That episode cost the lives of several Syrians. A crisis big enough to distract from the
current mess in Washington will undoubtedly cost a lot more lives. Given Trump’s ineptness and ignorance, such a
crisis could escalate rapidly into something much worse. That prospect is horrifying.
But equally terrifying, as a colleague and I discussed today, would be
the prospect of a terror attack against a US target right now. The potential of that for Trump and his
Whitehouse to ‘change the channel’ and push a self-serving agenda would be
enormous. And it would be a potential disaster
for the US and the world regardless of how successful the terrorists were in their
efforts.
In short, a ‘shock event,’ either contrived or coincidental, seems to me
to be a real, and serious, danger over the coming few weeks. And, unfortunately, I fear the odds that we
will see such a shock event in this crucial period are better than evens.
No comments:
Post a Comment