Friday, December 1, 2017

At The Core

Josh Marshall explains what motivates Trump and his minions in their foreign policy and the machinations to get Rex Tillerson out at the State Department and replace him with Mike Pompeo from the CIA and replace Pompeo with Sen. Tom Cotton, a war monger.

If the ‘Tillerson swapped out for Pompeo and then Pompeo replaced by Tom Cotton‘ shakeup actually happens, it will be amazing the degree to which Trump’s core campaign message – disengagement from aggressive, regime change-oriented policies in the Middle East – turned out to be unmitigated bullshit.

It’s not that it’s surprising of course. Trump campaigned as a champion of middle class ‘real Americans’ against Wall Street and coastal elite fat cats. He’s ended up presiding over an extreme Club for Growth handouts to Wall Street economic policy. But Trump’s anti-Middle East interventionism seemed a bit more core to his beliefs.

[…]

What it all boils down to is that racism – white racial grievance, immigration restriction, generalized bashing of basically any political or cultural assertion by African-Americans – is the only consistent and persistent line connecting the campaign to the presidency. This is not quite the same as saying that that’s the only real bottom line for his supporters – though there’s a lot of truth to that. But for Trump, that’s clearly the only thing that isn’t opportunistic and situational. Those all fall away. The only thing that doesn’t is the ethno-nationalism and racism. It’s the real him.

We’ve already seen how Trump will pick a fight with African-Americans and other non-whites; vide his stomping of Khizr Khan and then the take-a-knee battle was directed at “others.”  So going on the offensive in the Middle East — and throwing in North Korea for good measure — is just another day at the office for him and the people who support him.