An important subtext of this week\’s revelations is that it confirms that given the great power conferred by the Constitution on a president to conduct foreign policy, it matters if the president is a mobster. It matters if he is immoral. It matters if he doesn\’t care about the United States.
It matters if he is inexperienced. This seems obvious, but it was not enough to Americans to get him elected. Putin knew it though and that\’s why he supported Trump, because his goal was to diminish America and we have never been so diminished so quickly than these past three years.
To put it another way, it is not that Trump\’s foreign policy has been so ineffective, achieving almost nothing. It is that it has been so damaging to the U.S. and we are only just starting to learn of his private conduct and deals with other world leaders and their great cost.
There is only one group that benefit from Trump\’s foreign policy (and it\’s not him because it is going to get him removed from office one way or another and brought to justice one way or another). It is Putin and our enemies. Not only has Trump done Putin\’s bidding, granting the Russians many previously unimaginable concessions in US policy in exchange for helping him to achieve power (from Ukraine to Syria to undermining NATO to elevating Putin), but he has advanced Putin\’s goals and not always by virtue of following explicit directions (although he\’s surely done that). Rather, by taking a man with Trump\’s profoundly flawed character and inserting him into the role of the presidency, it is as if our foreign policy has been infected by a virus, a presidential diplomacy born pathogen that serially destroys US interests.
We know it is bad. We have seen the results with Russia, North Korea, trade, MBS and the Saudis, Netanyahu, and our allies and alliances. But we are also discovering now that we do not even fully know the damage it has done. It is surely, as this past week demonstrates, much much worse than we thought. It will take many years to discover, much less repair, the damage done. But one thing we know, it starts with neutralizing the pathogen, eliminating it from our system. Because if we don\’t, with every day, with every interaction between Trump and the world, we are diminished, we are put at risk, world peace and stability and prosperity are put at risk, the rule of law and international institutions are put at risk. United States foreign policy is on the critical list.
There is only one immediate cure. It is one we urgently require as do our allies and our hopes for the future of humanity. Trump, our pathogen-president, must go.
