We are Approaching a Dangerous Moment in the Trump Presidency

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.

Syria

Trump, Syria and Distraction

Last night, Thursday 6 April, Trump flip-flopped on a major campaign plank and intervened directly in the Syrian civil-war quagmire by ordering a missile strike on the air base understood to be the launch point of the Syrian air force’s chemical weapon strike against its own civilian population earlier this week.  While ostensibly reacting to the most recent atrocity and war crime of Assad’s regime, I think there are good reasons to be sceptical about the purpose and ongoing commitment of Trump’s apparent turn of heart.  There is also reason to be extremely anxious about this impetuous and instinctual use of American military might by Trump.  In several ways, this action – even though it is directed at a murderous, criminal regime fully deserving of punitive treatment – confirms some of the worst fears expressed before the election about handing to a man like Trump the keys to the world’s most powerful arsenal.

Why is everyone talking about America’s Reichstag Fire moment?

Why is everyone talking about America’s Reichstag Fire moment?

Interwar Germany seems to be on the minds of many commentators as they contemplate the direction that the American administration has been heading since Trump’s inauguration (just three weeks ago, yes its only been three weeks…).  And one moment from 1933 seems to be particularly concerning. Both Paul Walderman in a piece in This Week magazine and Roger Cohen in the New York Times  this past week brought up the possibility that there might be a “Reichstag Fire” moment in the future and mused what the consequences of that might be.