“I’m not isolationist, but I am “America First.” So I like the expression. I’m “America First.” We have been disrespected, mocked, and ripped off for many many years by people that were smarter, shrewder, tougher….And we were the big bully…the big stupid bully and we were systematically ripped off by everybody....For instance, protecting Saudi Arabia and not being properly reimbursed for every penny that we spend, when they’re sitting with trillions of dollars….We’re going to be friendly with everybody, but we’re not going to be taken advantage of by anybody.”
“One of the reasons we’re a debtor nation, we spend so much on the military, but the military isn’t for us. The military is to be policeman for other countries. And to watch over other countries.”
“At some point, we cannot be the policeman of the world.”
“We defend everybody. No matter who it is, we defend everybody. We’re defending the world. But we owe, soon, it’s soon to be $21 trillion. You know, it’s 19 now but it’s soon to be 21 trillion. But we defend everybody. When in doubt, come to the United States. We’ll defend you. In some cases free of charge.”
Above quotes from 3/26/2016 Transcript of then Candidate Donald Trump’s interview with NY Times on range of foreign policy topics–NY Times
“Over two telephone conversations on Friday, Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, discussed his views on foreign policy with Maggie Haberman and David E. Sanger of The New York Times. Here is an edited transcript of their interview (or just the highlights).”
………………….. 4/16/19, “Trump Vetoes Congressional Resolution to End Yemen War”
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4/16/19, “Poland is finalizing details of an anticipated deal to establish a U.S. military base in the country.”
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3/18/19, “Afghan Troops Frequently Robbed US-Funded Support Staff,”
“SIGAR: [US taxpayer funded] Workers often detained [meaning, kidnapped, imprisoned], some $780,000 stolen from them.”
If President Trump wants to restore the US to respectability he should resign immediately. His actions as president have allowed all the world to see that US presidential elections are meaningless, that voters are ignored, that the US is an out of control failed state with zero credibility to lecture other countries about how they should conduct their affairs. Trump’s successor is irrelevant. The point to be made is that the office of US president is fake.
Candidate Trump said no more will US be a “big stupid bully” and in any case we can’t afford it. He said US is $21 trillion in debt and can’t attend to its own needs because it has no money. As president, without blinking Trump has made the US an even more vicious bully and added to the $21 trillion debt he said was hurting us. As to Russia, friendships the sovereign nation of Russia chooses to have are none of Trump’s business. Neither are Venezuela’s sovereign affairs the business of Trump or US taxpayers. Trump laughs in the face of his voters as he seeks half a billion US taxpayer dollars to overthrow Venezuela’s elected government. Who will stop the US war machine? Certainly US voters have no power to do so. One hopes that a group of countries will join to enact regime change in the US.
3/27/19, “Trump tells Russia to get its troops out of Venezuela,“ Reuters, Steve Holland, Lesley Wroughton
“The Trump administration has asked Congress for up to $500 million in foreign aid to help “support a democratic transition in Venezuela,” Pompeo said in written testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives.”…
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4/13/19, “I’m Jumping Off the Trump Train: Assange Was the Last Straw,“ James George Jatras
“To be sure, there have been other betrayals. The two strikes on Syria on phony chemical warfare accusations come immediately to mind. Or Trump’s failure to build the Mexican wall, coupled with repeated humiliating defeats in Congress with the predictability of Charlie Brown’s getting suckered by Lucy into trying to kick the football.
At the same time there were excuses. On Syria, maybe the President was fed false intelligence. Or maybe Ivanka was upset: Daaaddyyy, you have to dooo something! Or maybe Trump knew the CW accusations against Damascus were fake but felt he had to act (an ominous sign in itself) to deflect charges of being Putin’s puppet, hence what could be deemed deliberately pinprick pro forma strikes. On the wall, well you can’t trust lawyers’ advice, he just doesn’t understand his legal authority well enough, or maybe he…
But the Assange arrest and his upcoming renditi– – oops! – extradition to the United States are different. There’s no nuance. No excuse. No false intel report. No poor legal advice.
It’s plain and simple. The same entities (Deep State, permanent government, the oligarchy, the Borg, whatever term you like) that targeted Trump with the phony Russia collusion narrative want Assange’s scalp nailed to the wall. It’s one thing for favored outlets like the Washington Post and CNN to disseminate classified information that favors the Deep State, quite another to reveal information contrary to its interests. As the premier dispenser of embarrassing secrets that facilitates online dissidence from the established narrative (also under attack by governments and their tech giant accomplices) an example must be made of Assange pour encourager les autres. He can count on being sentenced to rotting for decades in a nasty Office Space federal prison (the US will gladly waive the death penalty to spare the Brits’ prissy Euro-consciences) but may very well die soon enough of natural causes, perhaps like Slobodan Milošević.
An essential role in Assange’s betrayal by Moreno was played by Trump’s Veep Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Former President Rafael Correa says a direct condition of Moreno’s getting a $4.2 billion IMF loan was Assange’s head on a platter.”…
[“Less than two weeks ago, on February 21, Ecuador signed a deal securing the controversial IMF loan for a total of $4.2 billion, in addition to another $6 billion from other U.S.-dominated financial institutions like the World Bank, for a total of $10.2 billion."…"In the end, the US sway over the IMF meant that Ecuador was required to placate the US to get that money. Ecuador’s recent attempts to stake out a comparatively independent foreign policy, something of which the Assange asylum move was a product, made them a lot of enemies, particularly in the US. As the government now tries to get on the good side of the US, Assange was the main thing the Americans wanted.”]
(continuing): “That’s a lot more plausible than establishment media reports that Assange was ejected for transgressing the Ecuadorians’ fastidious hygiene standards, which (whether based in fact or not) are just cynical defamations to justify his upcoming lynching.
It’s irrelevant whether Trump – who theoretically is the boss of all US agency operatives working with their Brit colleagues to get their mitts on Assange – let the nab go forward because he was unwilling to order his minions to stand down or was powerless to do so. In that regard, it’s similar to pointlessly asking why he has the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad national security team he does. Is it because of “Javanka”? Is it because he’s beholden to a gaggle of oligarchs? (Supposedly his being a self-financed billionaire made him immune from such influences.) Is it a reflection of a personality disorder?
In the end it doesn’t matter why, all that matters is what is. With Assange’s arrest Trump is now exposed as the wholly owned subsidiary of the Swamp he ran against. He’s now just a wheel fixed to an axle. All he can do now is spin….
Trump has utterly failed to control the border, much less deal with related issues like remittances, birthright citizenship, and aliens illegally voting. As retired Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor observes: “Surely, Trump should have concluded by now that without an Executive Order that commits the U.S. Army to the defense of the southern border and limits cross-border traffic to legitimate commercial activity, mass illegal immigration will not stop… In a word, Trump refuses to take command and match rhetoric with action, then he will join the pantheon of failed presidents that promised the world only, this time, the American Republic’s existence hangs in the balance.”
Unfortunately, Trump’s appointees – uniformly neoconservatives, Bush-era warmongers, and GOP apparatchiki – have better things for our military to do than defending our own country, to which they are at best indifferent. We can be thankful that Trump hasn’t started any new wars, yet, but his underlings’ dogged commitment to regime change in Venezuela and Iran may change that. His outreach to North Korea hangs by a thread in the face of blatant attempts to sabotage it….
Even without a war his remaining time in office will not be the revival of America that he promised.…
Despite his no longer representing a threat to the Swamp, the critters will continue to hate him anyway as an avatar of the America they seek to destroy: European ethnicity, Christian (culturally if not spiritually or morally), English-speaking, toxically masculine….
The man who had what is almost certainly to have been the last peaceful, political chance save what’s left of the American republic will thrash around for a few more years, having become little more than a catalyst for our nation’s demise and perhaps its dissolution.”…
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Image: Swimming pool in NATO’s new $1.23 billion hq, 2017 via Assar architects.
Since the Soviet Union no longer exists, our superiors had to come up with new ways to rob US taxpayers.
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