Platforms for Trump Trolls

MSNBC's Greta van Sustran brought in the old relic, Donald Rumsfeld, to pontificate. Greta must have known that Rumsfeld was going to be totally uncritical of President Trump's leadership. Thus, she was trolling for Trump.

Rumsfeld praised the Trump Cabinet but spent his time on it by talking exclusively about the National Security team. He doesn't seem to have been bothered by the fact of McMasters, the National Security head, has allowed himself to be used to bail out his boss from his Russian investigation problems and try to preserve the skin of Trump's  son-in-law, Jared Kushner, by arguing that setting up back channel communications is a legitimate diplomatic activity. Kushner, however, tried to set up the channel while he was a private citizen, with no government portfolio. We don't know what the purpose would be for setting up a communications channel that would bypass the existing communications channels.

Rumsfeld does not have any scholarly diplomatic credentials, nor any diplomatic experience. He is best known for insisting on too lean a military force to invade Iraq and then participating in decisions that dismantled the Iraqi armed forces, and may have played a role in getting the Baath Party banned, stripping the government of much of its administrative personnel.  Yet given Rumsfeld's scant diplomatic expertise and his massive failures in Iraq, Greta asked him to comment on President Trump's performance with his NATO allies on his recent European trip. Rumsfeld said that Trump handled it the same way he, Rumsfeld, would have handled it; however, when Trump went to Saudi Arabia he said he would not lecture, nor tell the Saudis what to do, while in his NATO speech, Trump lectured the NATO nations on their financial obligations. Also, Trump's staff was reportedly convinced that their boss would pledge U.S. adherence to Article 5 in the NATO Charter, which pledges all member nations to come to the aid of a member that has been militarily attacked. Trump made no mention of it.

Not mentioned in the exchange between van Sustran and Rumsfeld was the reiteration among six of the G7 nations of their support for the Paris Agreement with Trump lone person out.

Jim Bohannon has used his commentary space on "America in the Morning" to troll for Trump. On at least two occasions during the few months I have listened to the program, Bohannon has had top advisers to Trump and he has not challenged them in any way. When one of them went on a rant about Hillary Clinton, Bohannon let him rattle on without bringing him back to that subject at hand. Bohannon has tried to explain why Jeff Sessions lying under oath was not perjury, he has said of Russian/Trump collusion that "there is no there there"; he has dismissed any claim that any of Trump's actions have risen to the level of obstruction of justice; and yesterday he had Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) on, an ardent opponent of the Paris Agreement. Bohannon and Lee spent about equal air time trashing the Agreement.

It may be nit-picking on my part, but when the media says Trump was carrying out a campaign promise in withdrawing from the Paris Agreement, his specific promise was that he would tear up the Agreement as one of his first acts as president. He tried to have it two ways yesterday, as he said he would renegotiate the pact among some 195 nations. There is zero chance that this will happen.

Vladimir Putin may not be a Trump troll, and, instead, Trump may be his puppet; however, in an interview with a U.S. media reporter, Putin acknowledged that "patriotic" Russian hackers may have intervened in the U.S. presidential campaign. The fact that Putin called them "patriotic" strongly suggests that they did it in furtherance of Russian interests.

ADDENDUM:
*President Trump called Greg Gianforte to congratulate him on his election to Montana's single seat in the U.S. House. When a reporter asked press secretary Sean Spicer if Trump has made any reference to Gianforte's assault on a reporter, Spicer did not know of any. Shortly after the assault took place, reporters were asking if there was a direct connection between Trump's calling the media an enemy of the people and the physical assault. Such a connection would be difficult to prove, but a more plausible connection might be that Trump's condemnation of a "fake news" media, coupled with his encouragement of campaign rally attendees to beat up on protesters, may have create the climate for "normalizing" violence against reporters.