1.
Trump's
presidency turns into the art of the no deal
CNN, March 1, 2019
(CNN) Donald Trump's art of the
deal persona sold books like wildfire, anchored a blockbuster TV reality
show and proved a potent theme for a White House run.
But
it's beginning to look a house of cards on which to build a presidency.
It's
not just that Trump -- fresh from a
collapsed summit with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, a loss to Democrats over
his border wall and a set of underwhelming new trade deals -- is not living up
to his own billing.
The
strategy of presenting Trump as a consummate dealmaker is becoming an albatross
for the President, partly because he is operating in a domestic and
international environment where there are few low-hanging deals on offer.
Democrats,
with their new House majority, have little incentive to conclude joint projects
that make the President look good as he seeks re-election.
And
an increasingly unstable global geopolitical environment, characterized by
power grabs by rising developing nations such as China and resurgent giants
such as Russia, is challenging US leverage more than at any time since World
War II.
Trump's
disappointments dim the mystique central to his political appeal as an
instinctive deal maker who can get his way through bluffing, charm and
lightning business reflexes. The narrative built on the President as the master
artist of the deal also threatens to keep lining him up for failure at an
already fraught political moment and is creating an opening for potential 2020
opponents.
"The
President treats everything like a real estate deal," former Vice
President Joe Biden said in Nebraska on Thursday. " 'Just let me in the
room. I can convince the other party to make a deal.' Well, it requires hard,
hard, hard and consistent diplomacy."
In
fact, Trump has shown more proficiency in breaking deals than making them after
pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris global climate pact
and abandoning the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a massive multilateral trade
deal.
A
failure for 'reality show' diplomacy
North
Korea's refusal to make concessions at the summit was especially disappointing
for Trump since he had done so much to build it up, and with deepening
political and legal crises back home he badly needed a win.
In
the days before he met Kim, Trump predicted that the talks would be "very
productive" and said on Twitter that his tyrannical friend should take
advantage of the "AWESOME" economic incentives for denuclearizing.
The
White House had originally scheduled a signing ceremony for after the meeting
at a Hanoi hotel, raising expectations that a deal was imminent after talk over
the last week of some kind of peace pact.
Before
he went to Hanoi, Trump defended his approach.
"So
funny to watch people who have failed for years, they got NOTHING, telling me
how to negotiate with North Korea. But thanks anyway," Trump tweeted.
CNN's
Kevin Liptak reported that top aides had told Trump a deal was tough to reach
in Hanoi, but the President had harbored hopes that he could turn the tables.
He was dismayed to find that the North Korean leader was so inflexible.
Had
Trump been more aware of the tortuous history of US-North Korea negotiations,
he might have concluded that Kim was behaving exactly to type.
As
with other high-stakes situations during his presidency, Trump has seemed to
believe his own propaganda, entering the talks convinced of his capacity to
forge a deal.
For
all the chummy letters he and Kim exchanged, it was a lesson that when the
vital national interests of two nations clash, good personal chemistry goes
only so far.
Trump's
failure raises the question of whether an off-the-cuff approach, in which
powerful figures huddle to thrash out a deal, is as effective in international
diplomacy as it was in the Manhattan real estate game.
Kim,
according to the US side, was willing to take only limited steps to dispose of
his nuclear arsenal in return for a full lifting of sanctions. The North
Koreans maintained they would accept a partial easing of the trade
embargo in return for dismantling a key nuclear facility.
Pyongyang's
tactics appeared to back up recent assessments by US intelligence agencies,
which infuriated Trump, that the North would never renounce nuclear weapons
completely because its leaders see them as a guarantee of regime survival.
Trump
portrayed the impasse as part of a negotiating tactic, as if it were a hiccup
in a real estate transaction.
"Sometimes,
you have to walk," Trump told reporters in Vietnam.
Many
Republicans and North Korea analysts were actually relieved, having worried
that Trump might make a huge concession in his zeal for a deal, and praised him
for walking away.
2.
Michael
Cohen Calls Trump A 'Racist' And A 'Con Man' In Scathing Testimony
NPR February 27, 2019
Michael
Cohen, former attorney and fixer for President Trump, testifies before the
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday.
Donald
Trump apparently blessed the meeting his son held with a Russian delegation to
get dirt on opponents in 2016 and welcomed advance word of efforts by WikiLeaks
to disrupt the election, his former lawyer told Congress.
Those
were only a few of the politically incendiary allegations Michael Cohen made in
a landmark hearing before the House oversight committee on Wednesday. But he
stopped short of accusing Trump and his campaign of a full-on conspiracy
with the Russian interference in the 2016
presidential election.
Cohen
did, however, allege that GOP political consultant Roger Stone phoned Trump to
tell him that WikiLeaks intended to release a batch of emails that would
embarrass the Democratic National Committee.
Cohen
described being in Trump's office when Stone called to say he had just talked
with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange about the release. Stone has denied that,
but he too is facing charges of lying to Congress, in a federal case in
Washington, D.C.
A
lawyer for Assange also denied on Wednesday that he had spoken by phone with
Stone.
'I
Know What Mr. Trump Is'
Russian
intelligence officers stole emails from the Democrats and others as part of a
concerted attack on the U.S. election, although it still isn't clear how much
Trump and his campaign knew about Russia's efforts or whether the material
WikiLeaks obtained had originated from the work of Russia's intelligence
services.
Cohen
was asked whether he believed it was possible that Trump and his family might
have been compromised or whether they might have been willing to collude with
the Russians.
Yes,
he said.
Cohen
also suggested that Donald Trump Jr. may have told his father about the June
2016 meeting he scheduled at Trump Tower following an offer of help from the
Russian government — one the president has denied he knew about at the time.
But
Trump knew about everything, Cohen said.
"There
was nothing that happened at the Trump Organization ... that did not go through
Mr. Trump for his approval and signoff," he said.
A laundry list of alleged wrongdoing
- That Trump paid
Cohen, while in office, to cover the costs associated with buying the
silence of a woman who said she had had a sexual relationship with Trump
years earlier. Trump has acknowledged the payment but denied the
underlying allegations about a sexual relationship.
- That Trump's camp
encouraged Cohen to lie to Congress and the public about the negotiations
the Trump business had carried on with powerful Russians about a potential
Trump Tower real estate deal in Moscow. The statement Cohen prepared, he
said, was edited by Trump's lawyers. In a statement provided to NPR
Wednesday night, Jay Sekulow, one of President Trump's personal attorneys
relating to the Justice Department's 2016 Russian election interference
investigation, said "Today's testimony by Michael Cohen that
attorneys for the president edited or changed his statement to Congress to
alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely
false."
- Cohen said Trump
told him to lie about the medical deferments Trump received that excused
him from the draft during the Vietnam War. Cohen said Trump had no medical
records to back up his claim of a medical deferment but said he wasn't
"stupid" and had no intention of being drafted.
- Trump ordered Cohen
to find a fake buyer for a portrait of Trump to make it appear that the
painting had sold for a lot of money and was therefore valuable; actually,
Cohen said, Trump arranged to use money from his foundation to inflate the
sale price.
Cohen
also faulted Trump for remarks that Cohen called racist and for his years as a
"con man," treating nearly everyone as a sucker and using his
political aspirations as an "infomercial" for himself — not as a way
to serve the United States as the holder of its highest office.
3.
Crisis may be easing, but nuclear threat still
hangs over India and Pakistan
CNN March 1, 2019
Hong Kong (CNN) Tensions on the border between India and Pakistan last week
pushed the two nuclear-powered South Asian adversaries closer to conflict than
at any point in the past two decades.
While
the situation has calmed -- Pakistan on Friday released
an Indian air force pilot it captured after shooting his pane down --
drastic swings in relations are the norm. Both countries know the risks when
tensions spike.
Following
their separation in 1947, relations between India and Pakistan have been in a
near constant state of agitation. The two sides have fought several major wars
-- the last being in 1999 -- involving thousands of casualties and numerous
skirmishes across the Line of Control in the contested Kashmir region.
Since
that last clash, both countries have quietly sought to enlarge and upgrade
their military capabilities.
With
its military buildup over those decades, India now exceeds Pakistan on most
numerical measurements -- fighter jets, troops, tanks and helicopters.
India
far surpasses Pakistan in other measures, too, especially in military budget,
$64 billion to $11 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace
Research Institute (SIPRI).
But,
as is often the case, numbers don't tell the whole story.
The China question
India
has about 3 million military personnel compared to fewer than 1 million for
Pakistan, according to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, but
New Delhi can't focus them all on its neighbor to the west.
A
chunk is focused on India's northeast and its border with China.
"India's
strategic problem is bringing its heft to bear. It has traditionally had to
split its forces and leave some in the east to deter Chinese adventurism,"
said Peter Layton, a former Australian Air Force officer and now fellow at the
Griffith Asia Institute.
In
1962, India and China engaged in a bloody border war and skirmishes have
continued to break out sporadically throughout the subsequent years, most recently
in the Doklam area in 2017.
And
China is able to keep Indian attentions divided by keeping a close military
relationship with Pakistan.
"There
is a convergence with Chinese and Pakistan strategic thinking that has
continued for five decades now," said Nishank Motwani, a visiting fellow
at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy with expertise on India and Pakistan.
China
plays another role as Pakistan's biggest arms supplier -- with a whopping 40%
of Beijing's military exports going to Islamabad, according to data from a
December discussion of Pakistan at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
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