United States intelligence officers and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan alerted their superiors as early as January to a suspected Russian plot to pay bounties to the Taliban to kill American troops in Afghanistan. …
Mr. Trump defended himself by denying the Times report that he had been briefed on the intelligence, expanding on a similar White House rebuttal a day earlier. But leading congressional Democrats and some Republicans demanded a response to Russia that, according to officials, the administration has yet to authorize.
(The New York Times, June 29, 2020)
Except that this denial is no more credible than the one he famously gave on Air Force One; you know, when he denied that he had paid porn star Stormy Daniels for sex. You just can’t believe a word this man says. Nor can you believe a word anyone says in a patent attempt to cover up for his pathological lies.
Meanwhile, reports are that twenty-two US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in 2019; eight so far this year.
Of course, any “normal” president would have taken immediate steps to avenge the death of any US soldier who died as a result of this diabolical plot. Instead, Trump redoubled his efforts to reward President Vladimir Putin; this, by attempting to bully world leaders into readmitting him into the G7 – complete with a guest-of-honor role during a summer meeting at the White House.
As I noted in my June 1 commentary, German Chancellor Angela Merkel led the roll call of those treating Trump’s invitation as if he were a skunk hosting a garden party and touting a rattlesnake as his special guest.
But nobody should be surprised that Trump is willfully trying not to see anything wrong – even with this plot. After all, the premise of John Bolton’s whole book, The Room Where It Happened, is that Trump would sellout the entire US Army if he thought that would guarantee his re-election.
Lest we forget, this is the same draft-dodging, self-regarding president who recently ordered over 1000 graduating cadets at the United States Military Academy at West Point back to campus. Why? He did so just for a photo-op of himself looking like his pal Pootie, namely presiding like a dictator over buttoned-up soldiers marching and saluting in formation.
He couldn’t care less that he risked each one of them contracting the coronavirus; or that each could return home, infect, and probably kill an elderly loved one. Hell, I suspect Trump’s only concern was that the cadets were not bearing arms to look like “real” soldiers.
Then again, we did not need Bolton’s book to know that Trump has chosen not to see anything wrong with Putin
- meddling in the 2016 presidential election and fomenting chaos in the United States;
- assassinating Russian dissidents on the streets of London;
- propping up Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and Syrian dictator Bashar al-Aassad; and
- plotting to see NATO and the EU go the way of the Warsaw Pact and the USSR.
Incidentally, these points only hint at the myriad ways in which Trump, in just three years, has fractured many of the relationships and undermined much of the influence the United States spent over 70 years building up. And no mortal enemy could be prouder of what he has done than Putin.
In any event, as damning as it undoubtedly seems, the only issue this latest report raises for me is
- whether Trump is more afraid of what his niece Mary might disclose in her forthcoming book Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man than he is of what Putin might disclose in his Damoclean kompromat file.
“Enquiring minds want to know.” I’d also like to know what has become of the peace plan Trump has been negotiating with the Taliban, which I’m sure will display the greatest Art of the Deal, well, since his petition for divorce from Ivana.
I published “Method to Madness Behind Trump ‘Taking’ Hydroxychloroquine Finally Revealed: Resignation!” on June 4. But, instead of feigning sickness, fleeing mutiny might now be his saving grace from electoral disgrace.
Related commentaries:
Stormy Daniels… Merkel... G7…
Bolton / Mary Trump book… Trump Putin’s puppet…
Trump’s Afghan peace plan… method to madness…
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