The Apprentice President Tries To Rally His Viewers

It is becoming increasingly apparent that Donald Trump is merely playing at being President, treating the job in a similar way to his role on the reality show “The Apprentice”. As most of us know, many “reality shows” are actually highly scripted and Trump is playing his role in the same way. The difference, of course, is that you can not just “play” the leader of the free world when you are supposedly the leader of the free world.

Trump’s recent foreign trip ended in the predicted disaster with our European allies as he lied to his NSA, Secretary of Defense, and Secretary of State and pointedly refused to reiterate the US commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty and then professed his skepticism about climate change, which he eventually followed through on by pulling out of the Paris Accords.

On the other hand, the earlier part of Trump’s trip, especially his visit to Saudi Arabia, was actually considered somewhat of a success. That included signing a much ballyhooed $110 billion deal with the Saudis and a supposedly successful summit with Arab leaders that focused on a coordinated approach to terrorism. We now know that this success was largely a mirage and has totally collapsed in the last few days.

Yesterday, the Saudis, along with the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Yemen broke diplomatic ties with Qatar. This is all part of the proxy war between the Saudis and Iran which is also wrapped up in the intractable Sunni-Shia conflict that has riven the Islamic world and especially the Mideast for centuries. Observers believe that the Saudis were emboldened by Trump’s support for them during his recent visit and took this step to isolate Qatar because of its reported funding of radical groups, specifically the Muslim Brotherhood, its support for Al-Jazeera, and its more open outlook on Iran.

Trump, in his usual narcissism, took credit for this move, tweeting “During my recent trip to the Middle East I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar — look!”. The strategic problem for the US is that Qatar is the home of the largest base the US has in the Arabian peninsula.  It is a major intelligence hub for the US and a base from which we carry out operations against ISIS in Iraq and Syria and AQAP in Yemen. While the US may want to rethink our relationship with Qatar, Trump’s support for the Saudi-led action does nothing to help our overall strategic interests in the Mideast as a whole. Expect NSA McMaster and Secretary of Defense Mattis to be heading to Doha, the capital of Qatar, at some point in the near future to try to defuse the situation.

We also learned yesterday that the magnificent $110 billion deal with the Saudis is also mythical. The majority of the agreement includes proposals the Obama administration had already made that were never acted on by the Saudis. This agreement essentially provides promises to consider those deals some time in the future, something called “intended sales”, but there is very little immediate commitment for any of these projects by the Saudis. The fact of the matter is the Saudis are somewhat overextended already due to the continued low price of oil and the enormous amounts of money being drained by their own proxy war in Yemen. They really don’t have $100 billion or so lying around to waste on deals they don’t want or need at this time.

At this point, it might be worth mentioning that Saudi Arabia has paid the Trump International Hotel in DC over $250,000 in the six months between October, 2016 and March, 2017 for events held there. You can draw your own conclusions…

In a similar vein to the pretense of the Saudi deal, Trump has also made a pretense of announcing his supposedly $1 trillion infrastructure plan. The only problem, of course, is there is no plan, as I wrote yesterday. There is only a statement of principles that outlines the public-private partnerships that the Trump administration prefers. But that didn’t stop Trump from pretending he was signing a major piece of legislation yesterday when he put his signature on a memo that outlined his principles for privatizing the air traffic control system, passing out pens to those surrounding him as though it was a major accomplishment. The piece of paper he signed is less than an executive order and is entirely meaningless.

But meaningless gestures are the hallmark of the Trump administration and Trump himself. The rollout of the infrastructure “plan” was almost identical to the tax “plan” that was simply a one page memo outlining “principles” and virtually no detail has been added since then. Similarly, the summary firing of the US Attorneys was another grand gesture but has been followed by virtually no nominations to fill those positions since then. And the same goes for US Ambassadors.

Of course, the narcissism in Trump forces him to blame others, claiming that Democrats are blocking all those nominations that have never been made yet. But, in some ways, those missing nominations redound to Trump’s benefit because it results in more consolidation of power and decision-making in both the Justice Department on the legal front and in the White House regarding foreign affairs. In addition, these actions eliminate knowledgeable and reasoned pushback from the institutional bureaucracy against Trump’s ill-advised and possibly treasonous policies.

Trump’s recent tweetstorms about terrorism and the Muslim ban are again part of the gestures he makes in his current role. His attacks on the London Mayor, his refusal to acknowledge domestic terrorism that is not committed by a minority, and his support for the Muslim ban have nothing to do with an actual terrorism policy. The fact that his tweets actually undermine his administration’s case before the Supreme Court is also beside the point. Like all the other largely empty gestures listed above, they are signals to his base in order to shore up their support.

The reason for all this is that Trump needs that base to stick with him if he is to survive as President. Reports indicate that he will be live-tweeting James Comey’s testimony on Thursday where Comey is expected to outline and document the numerous occasions Trump tried to influence him to close down the Russian investigation in what everyone already knows were attempts to obstruct justice.

Sadly, it is likely that his supporters will continue to support his act as President. He has the right wing media echo chamber to help him as Fox News has spent the last few disastrous weeks focusing on the restrictions to speech on college campuses. And that 35% of the electorate that still supports Trump will keep on enjoying his show of playing the President.