An e-mail came to me overnight from a friend in Australia.
My friend is a former journalist, an erudite man, a student of America politics. He knows far more about U.S. politics and policy than I do about Australia.
He writes this about the rant Donald J. Trump’s launched against Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull while on a long-distance phone call with his colleague Down Under:
Shocking, yes. Disappointing, certainly.
Surprising, ‘fraid not!
This was always on the cards, and I can’t help wondering whether Obama perhaps had laid this as a trap for Trump in the event he did win the presidency.
A good analysis from an Australian academic here:
Trump picked his target well. Australia is small enough, friendly enough and inconsequential enough to be the perfect scapegoat for Trump to demonstrate what now substitutes for diplomacy.
He wanted to make an example of someone in his typical swingdick manner, and we fit the bill perfectly. Think of the school bully singling out the smallest kid in a group of friends and beating the s*** out of him just to show the others who is boss. That the leader of the US… any leader of the US… publicly behaves like this is sad, pathetic… and dangerous. I was going to say Leader of the Free World… but Angela Merkel has assumed that mantle, while China is showing maturity and poise in its stewardship of international trade.
Over here, we are dreading to think what favours Trump will extract from us if he’s going to honour this deal. Possibly military intervention in the South China Sea, which we cannot afford and certainly don’t need. Sadly our Prime Minister is a hostage to the hard right in his own party here, so us taking these unfairly-detained refugees is off the table for nothing more than base political reasons. Karma at work, some would say.
I thought the job of government was to bring order to chaos and protect the citizenry. I must be clearly mistaken.
Trump is scary alright … but Steve Bannon is terrifying! Him along with the cabal of crooks, vandals and liars they’ve assembled as an administration.
I know Michael Moore has suggested it’s actually a coup in all but name.
It’s a sad day when someone whose nickname is ‘Mad Dog’ stands out as the sanest person in the room.
I’ve been reading commentary this week suggesting either impeachment or the 25th Amendment as fail safes.
My money’s on impeachment – tax returns, business conflicts-of-interest, or eventual proof of collusion between Russian hackers, Putin and the Trump campaign on the Podesta emails.
It’s in there somewhere! The question is, how much damage will be done beforehand, and to what extent will it be irreparable.
Take care my friend … We’re still holding our breath over here.
Hmmm. So are many of us here.