The emirs and princes and various other leaders of the Middle East are over Trump now.
After months of conflict, and continuing missile and drone strikes by Iran and its proxies, three officials and a former U.S. diplomat told The Washington Post, the governments of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain are now united in their aggravation with the administration. Some have begun to debate the utility of continuing to host large U.S. military installations on their territory.
As long as Trump is president, there is no “utility.” Trump has no understanding or appreciation of strategic alliances. He may have no idea how those U.S. military installations got built in Middle East territory. He may think the U.S. bought the properties like real estate. And as erratic as he’s been, there’s no way to know how he would respond if any of those nations needed actual defense.
And the other story I saw was about a three-time Trump voter and MAGA guy whose Russian wife was arrested by ICE.
Last month, moments after the couple got off their flight in Burbank, Calif., a young man in a brown hooded sweatshirt stopped Galina Bobreneva.
“Congratulations, you’ve been chosen for secondary screening,” he told her, according to the couple’s recollection.
The man was a federal agent, and after questioning Ms. Bobreneva for about 15 minutes, he led her away in handcuffs to an unmarked vehicle.
“I’m only doing my job,” he said. “Everything will be OK.”
So began a 16-day ordeal: a night on the floor of a basement holding cell in downtown Los Angeles; two weeks in a Mojave Desert detention center and a frantic legal effort to win her release.
Freed on a $35,000 bond with an electronic monitor clamped to her ankle, she is now fighting to stay in the United States against federal charges of overstaying her visa.
Ms. Bobreneva and her husband have been married for less than a year, and her application for a green card, sponsored by her husband, is still pending. In the past a person in this situation wouldn’t have had to worry about an expired visa, the article says.
Although green-card applicants with expired visas can be detained under federal law, previous administrations did not consider them to be in the country unlawfully. But as the Trump administration seeks to nearly double its daily arrests to 2,000 people, it is detaining and attempting to deport thousands of people who believed they were following the rules.
So it’s just about deporting as many people they can, for any reason or no reason. Oh, and the husband is, shall we say, disillusioned about Trump.
The two stories are very different, but they’re both about the same thing — a realization that Trump isn’t the man they thought he was. I keep seeing stories that Trump voters are disillusioned about Trump’s decision to start a war and the price of gas and groceries. Not all of them, of course. And Galina Bobreneva’s husband was a true Trump believer until ICE arrested his wife. There may be more out there who are one reality check away from being ex-MAGA.
But Trump has one constituency that I suspect will stand by him until the whimpering end. And these are Trump’s own people: white collar crooks.
David Frum writes at The Atlantic,
“Many secrets; no mysteries.” That’s the master code of the Trump administration. When it does something strange, there’s never any mystery as to why: Somebody close to the president, or possibly the president and his family themselves, intends to score a dishonest dollar. Exactly who and how may be secret. Exactly why is no mystery.
So it is with the news that the Department of the Treasury has ended ownership-reporting requirements for U.S. businesses and purged the existing database of ownership information. This seemingly technical-sounding change is a huge gift to financial crooks, who can now store and launder dark money in U.S. financial institutions with less risk of detection. But the gift comes at the direct expense of banks, mutual funds, insurance companies, and other financial institutions, which now have to shoulder the burden of verifying customer data themselves.
Frum does into a lot more detail, but basically this change will make it a lot easier for white-collar crooks to move money around for illegal purposes without anyone catching on. It’s also potentially a national security issue. The system Trump is shutting down was put into place in response to September 11.
But at least we know Trump does have some loyal followers left.
Trump has begun a phase of trying to cover his tracks. I'm sure it was in place before but Trump senses that this election will rob him of much of his power in Congress, maybe all of it. The means investigations. The DOJ is trying to expand the application of executive privilege to anyone who ever breathed while Trump has been alive. (I exagerate only slightly.) Trump intends that anyone who actually knows, will be prevented from testifying to Congress whether they want to or not.
The database Trump is deleting is not the only source of information. It will slow down inquiries but money can't easily move without leaving a trail. It stands up and screams, "I'm hiding something."
The BBC is being sued by Trump. They did a story which may have been deceptive in its editing. They apologized for how they put actual quotes together in a way that hurt his feelings. But Trump filed a 10B suit, which opened the door to discovery. So Trump has modified the suit to avoid opening his business books. Now the BBC wants to depose Ivanka and Jared and I forget who else. They have been ducking subpeonas and the BBC is asking the court to intervene. I predict Trump can't stop discovery and when the BBC gets too close to truth, Trump will withdraw the suit.
Trump likes to play baseball under rules where only his team has a turn at bat.
Back when Clinton was president, he issued a blanket pardon for Vietnam draft dodgers, many of who had fled to Canada. I'm not a historian but it's the first pardon I know of that didn't name the person being pardoned. IMO, Trump's lawyers have started drafting the most vague pardon ever signed. He's gonna want to cover anybody and everybody on his side for anything and everything. The scope (IMO, and I am no lawyer) may put the validity of the pardons at risk. Clinton named a specific class of people who had legitimate objections to the morality of the draft and the morality of the war they were being drafted to fight. Trump will want to protect his pedophile friends, his cronies who made money with insider trading, his entire administration, all of ICE, all of DOJ lawyers, the militias Trump wants to put on the payroll and I'm sure I'm forgetting some. It seems to me, when compared to what Clinton did, it's too vague to stand up in court and may be invalidated totally.
And one thing I forgot… the grand poohbas of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain are facing the results of the US losing the war. Iran is not forgiving Trump for the attacks. I'm thankful Iran can't easily reach the US but all the Arab states are in reach of Saudi drones and missiles. One reason the Lincoln had such a rough time of it is because a resupply base in the Middle East got clobbered by Iran. By now it's sunk in – we can't defend our own bases in the Mid East and they are trusting us to protect them???
After six months of no oil flowing out, they have to be feeling a money crunch. Ah, but in a year or so, they will have constructed pipelines to ports outside of the bottleneck of the Straight of Hormuz. Right. Thousands and thousands of miles of pipelines, and Iran still has stockpiles of drones. Iran can't strike the US. The US can harden their defenses of the bases. (It won't be cheap.) But the friend of my enemy is my enemy.
Iran wants the US out of the region. Looks to me like Iran can shut off oil exports from all the previously mentioned countries til hell freezes over. Unless Trump can find a way to decisively win the war against Iran, the US will be evicted from all the oil-supplying nations pretty soon. Trump is trying to put a money crunch on Iran but I'd guess China will step in with cash for Iran to ensure Trump fails. Nobody will doubt that the US lost Trump's war.
I hang out on YouTube too much. There are several channels of nothing but MAGAs crying that Trump is not what they expected. One of my favorites is Woke Politics. Always worth a laugh or three, despite the tears and rage of people painfully waking up. There is no shortage of material for these channels, and it's going to get worse as the Big Awful Bill kicks in after November.
I also see a lot of videos by Abdul El-Sayed. Finally someone who's articulate and can clearly explain to his constituents what's going on:
No one needs $100 billion…just like no one needs a 12-stack cheeseburger
This one gets into the weeds a bit, but someone needs to plant the flag for Medicare-For-All, and being an MD, he's just the guy: Whats Brewing? Medicare For All.
It reminds one of the Regan Era when taking out the local savings and loan was the path to riches for many aspiring young republicans of that wing of the party. Neil Bush was in the headlines a lot then and some may recall the Silverado Saving and Loan. He might need a gold-plated statue in D.C. The entrance to the new ball room a fitting location for sure.
The internet lists his net worth at only 30 million which may not be enough to qualify. The white-collar wing really needs a richer poster child.
The last time our nation's oil reserve was this low was about that time frame. It is reported they are worried about problems with the cavern's structures so much has recently been sucked out. Not enough to have reasonable fuel prices, but I'm sure it helps some. Usually this would trigger national security alarm bells but, we have an overload on the unusual of late.