Day 467: What’s the opposite of policy instincts? Because that’s what Trump has.
Willfully ignorant, Trump tries to make rash decisions.
The big takeaway from many pundits after a Monday NBC News report was that Chief of Staff John Kelly has called his boss, Donald Trump, an idiot on multiple occasions.
And sure, that’s newsworthy and it’s far from the norm for someone in Kelly’s position to refer to someone in Trump’s position in that way. But that story largely buries the lede on the bigger revelation: the magnitude of Trump’s ignorance about basic policy issues.
For instance, Trump randomly wanted to pull the 23,000 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen out of South Korea.
In one heated exchange between the two men before February’s Winter Olympics in South Korea, Kelly strongly — and successfully — dissuaded Trump from ordering the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from the Korean Peninsula, according to two officials.
This would have been a remarkably short-sighted idea. First, the presence of American troops is a deterrent for North Korean aggression in the region. Additionally, the North has tried to get Americans off the peninsula for decades and would be a central point in any denuclearization negotiation. By removing all of the troops from the region, Trump would have lost a potential concession without receiving anything in return. His reckless desire to want to pull a key issues off the table before even sitting down shows how little he understands about the region and undercuts his self-professed expert negotiating skills.
As it relates to warming relations on the Korean peninsula, Trump supporters have already declared that he should be nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work in the region, but the NBC News report confirms that he’s just bumbling along with no clear strategy or understanding.
On domestic policy issues, he’s not any better. Despite constantly tweeting about DACA, and blaming Democrats for the failure to pass a solution in a government controlled exclusively by Republicans, Trump’s knowledge of the program is non-existent.
“He doesn’t even understand what DACA is. He’s an idiot,” Kelly said in one meeting, according to two officials who were present. “We’ve got to save him from himself.”
Trump is the perfectly dangerous combination of ignorant and too lazy to learn. That’s likely why he sends so many Twitter missives. They’re easy, he knows they distract the masses, and he can pretend that he’s working hard by bragging about the smallest of tasks. As more reports emerge every day, however, it’s clear that behind the scenes, Trump is lost.
467 days in, 995 to go
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