The Guardian: Trumpism has taken over: but what happens to the Republican Party if Trump loses?

 The debate has been fueled by hints Trump’s current iron grip on the party might weaken. Republican leaders roundly rejected his idea of postponing the election because of the coronavirus pandemic. In negotiations over the latest economic stimulus package, they brushed aside his proposals for a payroll tax cut and a new FBI building.

Meanwhile Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, signaled to vulnerable Republican senators in tough election races that they can distance themselves from Trump if they deem it necessary, according to CNN. [...]

Second, the end of Trump would not necessarily mean the end of Trumpism. Nine in 10 Republicans still approve of the job he is doing as president, according to Gallup. A SurveyMonkey poll for Axios last December showed Republican voters’ favourite picks for 2024 led by Mike Pence, with Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr in second place, followed by Nikki Haley, Ivanka Trump, Marco Rubio and Mike Pompeo. [...]

In a recent interview with the Guardian, the Democratic strategist Paul Begala argued that a crushing defeat for Trump would be a catalyst for Republicans to reassess and revivify, just as Democrats did after three clarifying defeats in 1980, 1984 and 1988. But Stevens believes it will take more than one election. [...]

Thomas Patterson, a professor at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, argues that the party is caught in five traps of its own making, which Trump has only deepened: a steady movement to the right; demographic change; influence by rightwing media blunting its ability to govern; big tax cuts that created a split between its working-class supporters and marketplace conservatives; a disregard for democratic norms and institutions.

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New York Magazine: What Will Republicans Do If Trump Goes Down?

If there is a Republican cascade against Trump, in retrospect, it will look inevitable, as if the steady drip of revelations and testimony was always destined to reach that final dramatic tipping point. But a note to future historians: As of this moment, it does not look inevitable at all. [...]

The obvious figure who could keep a party together composed of MAGA folk and other sorts of conservatives who for one reason or another dumped Trump, it would be Mike Pence. He’s been loyal to POTUS to the point of embarrassing sycophancy. Yet before he joined Trump’s ticket, he was a rigidly conventional conservative with many friends among his fellow House Republicans. And he’s beloved (at least at the leadership level) among Trump’s and the GOP’s single most important constituency: white conservative Evangelicals. As McKay Coppins notes, he could represent a soothing alternative if the stormy barbarian in the White House just vanished [...]

Indeed, Pence seems to have been involved up to the eyeballs in the Ukraine plot. His team’s messaging — Yes, he pressed the Ukrainians to investigate corruption, but he never appreciated that Trump’s true purpose was to pursue the Bidens — fails the laugh test. Pence’s taint presents a political problem for him, but raises a much graver question for the country. If the Senate ever could muster the integrity to remove Trump from office, there would be no Ford to put in his place, only a vice president who participated in Trump’s dirty schemes, from staying at a remote resort to direct government funds to Trump’s failing Irish golf course to extorting an invaded country to fabricate political dirt to help Trump’s reelection. [...]

Besides, outside Utah and LDS circles, and perhaps some Wall Street precincts, Romney has never been and will never be a beloved party titan. He was tolerated by many in 2012 because his rivals turned out to be feckless. But he’s become a symbol of Establishment Republican failure, the most important contributor to Trump’s ascent in the first place. Replacing Trump with the Mittster would be the deepest insult imaginable to mourning MAGA folk who view him as the epitome of the Swamp, both as a politician and as a champion of financial elites. It really wouldn’t make much sense. [...]

By process of elimination, if Trump goes down and Pence is cast aside, Republicans would need to quickly find a unity figure not involved in 2016 or more recent, divisive intra-party squabbles. That narrows it down to possibly one person: Paul Ryan. He’s obviously very well-known, with plenty of friends on Capitol Hill and on Wall Street. He’s been on a national ticket before, with the Mittster, whose defeat no one blamed on him. He’s in the neighborhood, having recently moved back to Washington, probably in anticipation of getting the Mother of All Lobbying Gigs — which fortunately he has not yet secured. He’s from the state many experts believe will decide the 2020 election, Wisconsin. And he knows how to graciously accept a call to service while appearing to resist it, having become Speaker of the House precisely through this role as a reluctant party savior.

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The Guardian: ‘Brought to Jesus’: the evangelical grip on the Trump administration

The secretary of state’s primary message in Cairo was that the US was ready once more to embrace conservative Middle Eastern regimes, no matter how repressive, if they made common cause against Iran.

His second message was religious. In his visit to Egypt, he came across as much as a preacher as a diplomat. He talked about “America’s innate goodness” and marveled at a newly built cathedral as “a stunning testament to the Lord’s hand”. [...]

The gravitational pull of white evangelicals has been less visible. But it could have far-reaching policy consequences. Vice President Mike Pence and Pompeo both cite evangelical theology as a powerful motivating force. [...]

For many US evangelical Christians, one of the key preconditions for such a moment is the gathering of the world’s Jews in a greater Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. It is a belief, known as premillenial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism – and it has very real potential consequences for US foreign policy. [...]

The comparison is made explicitly in The Trump Prophecy, a religious film screened in 1,200 cinemas around the country in October, depicting a retired firefighter who claims to have heard God’s voice, saying: “I’ve chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this.”

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Haaretz: Partners in Occupation: Trump Provides the anti-Palestinian Incitement, Israel the Bullets

What began as the ethnic cleansing of at least 418 Palestinian villages and cities today takes a different shape. The inauguration of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem while a massacre was taking place in Gaza only 40 kilometers away aptly demonstrates the complete U.S. and Israeli denial of the Palestinian history of dispossession.

What became known as the "Great March of Return," an initiative to demonstrate for the internationally recognized rights of the Palestinian people, was savagely attacked by Israeli forces, under clear instructions from their political and military leadership. [...]

That is why, in the preamble to the massacres committed against unarmed Palestinians in Gaza during the embassy inauguration, people like the U.S. Ambassador David Friedman and envoy Jason Greenblatt became nothing less than spokespeople for the Israeli occupation. 

The complicity between the Israel and the U.S. became strikingly clear when, while at least 40 Palestinians had been slaughtered in Gaza during the previous hours, the only reference to the Palestinian people during the embassy inauguration came from President Trump’s advisor and son-in-law, Jared Kushner: he blamed the victims for the massacre, in what has become a recurrent talking point used by pro-occupation officials and activists.

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The Atlantic: Ukraine’s Successful Courtship of Trump

Trump has said repeatedly that “no one is tougher on Russia” than him. But his critics have accused him of challenging Putin only superficially. Shortly after the Trump administration expelled 60 Russian diplomats in March—48 of whom were actually intelligence officers, according to a State Department spokesperson—the State Department acknowledged that the Kremlin would be allowed to refill the vacated positions. The Treasury Department recently sanctioned more than three dozen Russian oligarchs, officials, and entities who “profit” from Russia’s “malign activity” and “corrupt system.” But many of the sanctioned oligarchs had four months’ notice to move their money, thanks to a list of Russia’s wealthiest individuals released by the Treasury in January. That money might already be back in Russia. “As they say, ‘a barking dog cannot hinder a caravan’s journey,’” Putin told Russia’s TASS news agency at the time. He mocked his own absence from the list. When UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced new sanctions against Russia over its support for embattled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, she was contradicted by the White House hours later. [...]

Trump, ever transactional, also wanted to make sure he was not giving away something for nothing. The U.S. official said it was emphasized to the president that this would be a sale, not a gift, and Poroshenko won favor with Trump by facilitating an $80 million coal deal—the first between the U.S. and Ukraine—that was politically expedient for both leaders. In February, Ukrainian Railways signed a $1 billion locomotive deal with GE Transportation. Trump had promised during the campaign to revitalize the U.S. rail industry. “The Trump administration is very much focused on jobs creation,” said Daniel Vajdich, the president of the strategic advisory firm Yorktown Solutions. “So, naturally, Ukraine has thought about its ability to help create jobs for Americans in the context of creating leverage by feeding into Trump’s policy desires.” A Ukrainian-American lobbyist who spoke to me on condition of anonymity put it more bluntly: “Poroshenko has become a hostage of Trump,” he told me. [...]

In the months following the weapons sale, Poroshenko ordered Ukraine’s top anti-corruption prosecutor tasked with probing corruption under former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to stop cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort’s work in Ukraine and ties to Russia, according to two sources familiar with the request. The New York Times first reported on that order on Wednesday, indicating that Kiev had blocked the Manafort investigations just as the Trump administration was finalizing the weapons deal in an attempt to stay on Trump’s good side. Trump, according to the U.S. official, saw Manafort’s legal problems as a function of Yanukovych’s regime rather than a reflection of Poroshenko’s.

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Vox: Syria exposes the core feature of Trump’s foreign policy: contradiction

These proposals are coming from completely different places. It’s literally possible to remove the US ground troops who are in Syria to fight ISIS while continuing to bomb Assad-related targets from the air, but the two approaches reflect contradictory impulses to somehow end US military involvement in Syria while simultaneously threatening to bomb the country into the indefinite future. Trump’s first comments suggest the US will be heading for the exits; the second that the US is always a single chemical attack away from getting pulled in deeper. [...]

On Sunday, Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley publicly announced that the US would impose new sanctions on Russia, only to be overruled by the president; the sanctions are still in limbo. On Monday, Trump sent a tweet blasting China for keeping its currency artificially cheap to boost exports — contradicting his own announcement just a few months ago that China was not a currency manipulator. [...]

It’s not that Trump has absolutely no ideas about foreign policy. He does. He has a strong sense that, for example, foreign civil wars aren’t America’s problems. But some of his other impulses, like his visceral emotional reaction to photographs of gassed Syrian children, push him in opposite directions on the exact same policy issue. The result is the kind of public ping-ponging that you saw in the past two weeks of Syria debates. [...]

The high level of staff turnover, as well as the sharply divergent worldviews among the foreign policy principals, pushes the president in all sorts of different directions. This is especially true given his demonstrably limited interest in wonky, detail-oriented policy thinking, as this leaves a lot of the specific policy development to Cabinet members and their staff. So Mattis, a Russia hawk, can send several hundred US troops to Poland on a NATO mission specifically designed to challenge Russia even as the president is talking about how he wants to improve US-Russia relations.  

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Politico: Nikki Haley’s Split Personality at the U.N.

The U.S. ambassador made a strong plea for the world to back the Iranian people—whereupon a series of America’s friends wavered and equivocated over how to deal with Tehran. The French ambassador questioned whether the protests amounted to an international security threat deserving the council’s attention. The Swedish representative expressed doubts about the meeting’s timing. The Kuwaiti ambassador reminded his counterparts of how the early protests of the Arab Spring turned sour. It was clear that participants saw the meeting as a ploy for Haley to question the foundations of Iranian nuclear deal indirectly—and diplomat after diplomat flagged how strongly they support the agreement. [...]

The former South Carolina governor has enjoyed a stellar run in New York so far. A safe distance from the chaos of the White House, she quickly made friends with other important ambassadors, pushed through hefty cuts to the U.N. budget, in line with Trump’s wishes, and hammered out serious sanctions on North Korea with the Chinese. [...]

But while Haley the diplomatic fixer has won plaudits, there has always been a second Haley waiting the wings: a hardliner who is in lock-step with President Trump on the need to talk and act tough on many security issues. Above all, she has been one of the administration’s top public hawks on the Middle East. [...]

While last week’s Iran debate was a lower-profile affair, it was arguably a much more consequential one. If Haley alienates other powers over Iran, she could find that the goodwill she has built up will dissipate extremely quickly. Foreign ambassadors may treat run-ins with the U.S. over Israel as a standard professional hazard, but they broadly see the Iranian nuclear deal as essential to containing the metastasizing regional crisis in the Middle East. This belief unites all the permanent members of the Security Council other than the U.S.: Britain and France are liable to side with China and Russia to defend the nuclear agreement.

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openDemocracy: The colonial roots of Trump’s discourse on Iran

The current US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, is a staunch anti-Iran operator. She apparently played a significant role in shaping Trump’s position on Iran. Haley appears to be working on the deal, but she actually talks a lot about Iran without really mentioning the deal. Her sole relevant point is that Iran ‘might be cheating on the deal’, that Iranians have hidden nuclear sites and are violating the deal in secret, that Tehran has two faces, one shown to the world, one kept to itself.

The idea of hiding ‘real’ face also emerged in Trump’s belligerent UN speech: ‘The Iranian government masks a corrupt dictatorship behind the false guise of a democracy.’ Iran hides its reality, and unless we rend the mask asunder, Iranians will not show their real faces to the world. For Trump and Haley, the problem with Iran is not what Tehran actually does. It is framed as a moral one. They are mad that Iranians act stealthily and deviously. [...]

The first wave of books about Persia, including travelogues and diplomatic accounts and novels, appeared in early 19th century. They constitute a seemingly disparate set of documents produced by quite different people. Yet, a closer look reveals that they largely consolidated various aspects of one image. A substantial portion of those texts attempt to capture the essence of ‘Persian character’. Despite the different experiences of their authors, they reached surprisingly similar conclusions. [...]

In his exhaustive study of Persian and Persians, Lord Curzon encourages close relationship with Persia, because according to him, the white ancestors of Persians moved to Europe and birthed the white race. Curzon implies that since Persians were not Semitic, they were not exactly the ‘other’ of the west. They were the poor, shunned cousin, corrupted by intermingling with other races. Therefore, Persians have always had the volatile status of being intimate and distant at the same time. Unlike the brazen imperial swaggering the British demonstrated in the Arab world, they were never quite sure how to deal with Persia.

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Salon: U.S. votes against U.N. resolution condemning death penalty for LGBT people; is this who we are?

Last week, the United Nations Human Rights Council approved a resolution condemning the use of the death penalty in a discriminatory manner such as consensual same-sex relations. Along with 13 other nations, the United States voted against it. Instead, the U.S. sided with allies such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Qatar, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. Bangladesh, China and India also voted against the measure, which still passed along a 27-13 margin.

"The resolution asked countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty to ensure that it is not 'applied arbitrarily or in a discriminatory manner' and that it is not applied against persons with mental or intellectual disabilities and persons below 18 years of age at the time of the commission of the crime, as well as pregnant women," according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Association (ILGA). [...]

LGBT rights activists criticized President Donald Trump's administration and U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Nikki Haley, for not supporting the resolution. Yet, don't go thinking this stance is anything new or localized to the 45th president's administration. The U.S. has never voted to support any U.N. measure that condemns the death penalty in any way. The Obama administration did abstain from a similar vote in 2014, according to BuzzFeed News, though that one did not contain provisions for LGBT individuals.

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Vox: Here’s Vladimir Putin’s weirdly on-point analysis of North Korea

it’s strange to think of Russian President Vladimir Putin as a reliable source when it comes to geopolitical analysis. Yet when Putin talked about the US-North Korea nuclear standoff in a press conference on Thursday night, his assessment of the situation matched far more closely with what you hear from US experts on North Korea than anything that the Trump administration has said.

Putin’s core point is that the central strategy of US policy under Trump, Obama, and Bush — attempting to pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear program — has now conclusively failed. North Korea now believes that its nuclear arsenal is its best deterrent against an American invasion, and hence will not give it up no matter how much the United States tries to push them. [...]

That isn’t the Trump administration’s view. Just this week, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley called for “the strongest sanctions” to pressure North Korea into giving up nukes “before it's too late.” Yet the consensus position among America’s North Korea experts is that it is, in fact, too late: that nothing the US can do to Kim Jong Un could offset the deterrent value of his nuclear weapons. [...]

Finally, Putin argued that the best way to handle the nuclear crisis going forward is through negotiations — for the US and North Korea to develop better lines of communication in order to avoid a crisis escalating into a war that no one wants.

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FiveThirtyEight: Bannon May Be Out, But Nationalism Probably Isn’t

More than a decade before he was the president, Trump complained that the U.S. was being ripped off in trade deals, and now, he is pushing his administration to reconsider such agreements. He was touting his proposal for a border wall well before Bannon formally joined the Trump presidential campaign. In office, Trump praised John Kelly’s work as homeland security secretary in deporting undocumented immigrants and then promoted Kelly to chief of staff. In a 2011 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network, Trump said that there was a “Muslim problem” and that the Quran “teaches some very negative vibe.” It’s not clear if Bannon urged Trump to make remarks this week suggesting that white supremacists were on an equal moral footing with people protesting racial injustice. But Trump made racially charged comments before Bannon started working for him, most notably his repeated (and false) claims that Barack Obama was not born in the U.S. [...]

So will Bannon’s exit change anything? Well, the administration’s internal feuds could be less tense and less public. Bannon and his allies viewed themselves as advancing the true views of the president while arguing that other members of the administration were trying to impose establishment views on Trump. That fight often played out in public. Bannon-aligned staffers on the National Security Council, for example, were allegedly the unnamed sources behind stories that attacked national security adviser H.R. McMaster. Several of those aides were pushed out a few weeks ago. Bannon aide Sebastian Gorka has issued statements on foreign policy that contradicted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s views. Gorka is rumored to be on the way out as well. Bannon himself gave a long interview to The American Prospect in which he publicly disagreed with the administration’s North Korea policy. He is now gone. [...]

That said, even with Bannon out, Trump’s administration still includes at least seven power centers. (Virtually all the staffers who were aligned with Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, have departed, effectively eliminating the “Party Wing” of the White House. I think the Bannon Wing remains, even if its namesake is gone.) Trump’s administration contains a weird mix of strong conservatives (the wing led by Vice President Mike Pence), Wall Street types (White House National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn), foreign policy hawks (Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley) and his family members (Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump). These groups disagree with one another (Kushner and Ivanka Trump are less conservative on issues like abortion and LGBT rights than is Pence, for instance) and with Trump (his foreign policy team is much more skeptical of Russia than the president is). The federal bureaucracy is likely to remain in some tension with Trump, and figures like Kelly and Tillerson still have powerful jobs, even if they don’t fit into an obvious wing.

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The Intercept: U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley Doubled Down on Threats to Punish Criticism of Israel

U.N. AMBASSADOR NIKKI HALEY repeated her prior threats to punish criticism of Israel on Monday, boasting about creating a climate of fear at the U.N. in which other diplomats are frightened to speak to her about recent efforts to condemn Israel’s illegal colonization of the West Bank. [...]

Since her confirmation Haley has moved quickly to silence any criticism of Israel at the U.N. In her first speech at U.N. headquarters in New York, Haley promised to “have the backs of our allies,” and added that “for those who don’t have our back, we’re taking names; we will make points to respond to that accordingly.” [...]

Throughout the hearings, Haley claimed her willingness to silence criticism of Israel as a chief qualification. She reminded the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that as governor of South Carolina, she was the first governor to sign a law punishing businesses who participate in boycotts of Israel – a law that inspired dozens of similar bills in other states. She was eventually confirmed by the full Senate by a vote of 96-4.

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