Month: May 2017

The Trump voters are running the world

by digby

Watching CNN today I learned that Donald Trump’s cretinous behavior in Europe is to be expected because a lot of Americans really hate those cheese-eating elitists who are condescending toward Republican presidents, especially when they want to invade foreign countries that haven’t attacked us. Apparently, they are supposed to accept whatever the US dishes out and say thank you because Republicans proudly elect idiots to run the world’s only superpower these days and that’s just the way it is.

Here’s an analysis from the real world:

When President Trump spoke to NATO members for the first time on Thursday he failed to say the one thing Europeans were waiting to hear. He never mentioned America’s unwavering commitment to Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, which states that an attack on one is an attack on all. Twitter erupted in a storm of outrage and, for at least a few hours, #NATO was trending. Sean Spicer, responding to the criticism, stressed that even though the president didn’t say it outright, he is “fully committed” to NATO and Article 5.

Spicer’s logic? Trump’s mere presence at the dedication ceremony at the new NATO HQ was evidence enough. For folks that don’t track NATO issues on a day-to-day basis (and that’s most people), the president’s omission may not seem like a big deal. But Trump’s refusal to repeat what so many members of his own Cabinet have already stated — including his vice president — was a significant blow to the transatlantic relationship and could have lasting consequences.

Why were Europeans so eager to hear Trump utter the words “Article 5”? It was just last summer when Trump, in an interview with the New York Times, alluded to the fact that the United States could make its commitment to Article 5 conditional on whether the country in question was spending enough on defense. That sent a shiver down the spines of many NATO allies as they imagined calling Washington in a crisis — only to be asked first asked whether they had met the 2 percent target. (For many, the answer would be no.) Throughout the campaign, Trump also called the alliance “obsolete” (before he said it was “no longer” obsolete) and has repeatedly claimed — falsely — that NATO allies owe the United States vast sums of money.

But as wrong as Trump has been about NATO over the last two years, Europeans have known that he’s been right about one thing: allies need to invest more in their own national defense. That’s the irony of yesterday’s tragic episode. Europe came to the NATO Summit this week ready to meet the president halfway. They know the parade of secretaries of defense and past presidents that have urged them to do more were right. Many allies have even worked to accelerate their plans to reach the 2 percent target in an attempt to give the alliance and the new U.S. president a solid win. But in order to convince their publics to support those costly defense investments, they needed some reassurance from Trump in return. Now that he’s failed to provide that reassurance, Trump himself may have just hindered his ability to move the needle.

Adding insult to injury, Trump also failed to say anything of substance about Russia, the future of sanctions, or enhanced deterrence measures across Central and Eastern Europe.

Adding insult to injury, Trump also failed to say anything of substance about Russia, the future of sanctions, or enhanced deterrence measures across Central and Eastern Europe. Silence on those issues has generated even more anxiety and forced Europeans to draw their own conclusions. Paired with the omission on Article 5, some allies are already assuming that the United States won’t come to their aid if Russia does something rash on their territory or in their neighborhood. Moscow literally could not have asked for a better outcome since its longstanding goal has been to undermine NATO, U.S. credibility, and transatlantic unity.

Instead of inspiring the alliance to move ahead with much-needed reforms and turn its attention to the many threats NATO allies face on both sides of the Atlantic, Trump did the exact opposite. He fueled uncertainty and insecurity, which will serve as an obstacle to transatlantic cooperation in the years ahead. Why, allies are already asking themselves, should we make politically difficult decisions to invest in our defense when it’s unclear whether the United States has our back? Trump could have cleared that up with a single sentence yesterday.

Instead, he and a few ill-informed, inexperienced, and short-sighted members of his team opted for petulance and arrogance — a decision that plays well with Trump’s base but won’t serve them well with America’s closest allies.

This is a very delicate moment. After two worldwide conflagrations in 30 years Europe and Japan more or less disarmed and for more than half a century the Europeans have depended upon the US security umbrella. But twice now in the last 16 years we’ve elected unqualified leadership through dubious electoral processes. Under the first a group of ideologues used that immense power to destabilize the middle east at the worst possible time. Now, with this neo-fascist buffoon who seems to be tilting toward Russia for obscure reasons they are understandably getting very, very nervous. As should we all. So, it’s likely they are going to arm up. So are a lot of others. And it looks as though we’re going to help some of them by “making good deals” for arms manufacturers.

What could go wrong?

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“You illegal?”

by digby

Maybe we could require undocumented immigrants to wear some kind of insignia on their clothes to make it easier to identify them when they get hit by a truck. Why should police even have to ask?

Everything was recorded on the body cameras of the police who responded to the accident.

Marcos Antonio Huete, a 31-year-old Honduran immigrant, was lying on a sidewalk next to his bicycle after being hit April 27 by a GMC Sierra pickup truck on his way to work in Key West in the Florida Keys.

“You illegal? Are you a legal citizen or no? Speak English? You got ID? Passport, visa, or what? a Monroe County sheriff asked Huete insistently, according to the video.

Still on the ground, Huete answers with monosyllables before using a cell phone to call his sister, who arrived at the scene soon after.

Lea este articulo en español

Hours after the accident Huete left hospital on crutches and was sent to the Krome Detention Center near Miami, where he has spent almost a month in detention pending possible deportation.

According to his sister, Olga Huete, after he was discharged from the hospital a police officer told them to return to the scene of the accident. “He did not tell us why, but we went back because my brother had not done anything. We had no reason to flee.”

Fined and detained by the Border Patrol

Once there, he says he was fined $75 by a Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles (FHP) officer for causing the accident. The incident report accuses Huete of obstructing/hindering traffic and listed his injury severity as “possible.”

Huete allegedly “darted out in front” of the pickup as it turned right across a marked crosswalk striking the rear tire of Huete’s bicycle. The officer decided that the driver, a 45-year-old Key West woman, was not at fault.

Then Border Patrol agents showed up and asked to see Huete’s papers, suspecting him of being undocumented.

Olga Huete says that while they don’t have papers, she is outraged by what she called the lack of justice in blaming her brother after he was the victim. She said the woman driving the pickup was allowed to drive away “as if it was nothing.”

“The fact that we do not have papers does not mean that we do not have rights,” she said.

In a statement to Univision, the Border Patrol said that FHP communicated with its agents “to assist in the identification of the subject (Huete).” However, he says that such communication between the agencies is “rare.”

It’s rare. But it’s getting less rare every day.

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The media’s role in the incipient fascism

by digby

Brian Beutler’s piece on the violence against a reporter in Montana discusses how the media dealt with it and it pulls no punches:

In a healthier political culture, the condemnation would have been nearly unanimous, and the context of the incident would not have been a matter of controversy. What we witnessed instead was a political media—confronted with a one-sided assault on its most basic freedom—rendered by its own constructs largely incapable of identifying the threat with any precision.

Our politics is beyond broken. A) this shouldn’t be seen as a successful strategy. B) paid professionals should be ashamed exploiting it https://t.co/Jprp5wzD31

— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) May 25, 2017

Before he became president of the United States, Donald Trump toured the country encouraging violence against protesters and whipping up animosity toward the press. Earlier this month, Trump’s Health and Human Services secretary, Tom Price, sicced police on a reporter who was trying to ask him a question in the West Virginia state capitol on account of the fact that he didn’t recognize the reporter as an attendee of a press conference, then praised the police for their diligence. Last week, the FCC’s security detail manhandled a tech reporter at the National Press Club.

Republicans know in theory how to get their hackles up over political violence directed at reporters, because in January 2010, when an aide to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley pushed a conservative reporter (then helped him up, and apologized for his behavior) Republicans tried to end his career in public service.

Their tacit acceptance of a culture of antagonism and violence directed at the press suggests at least that the party’s values have changed.

Set aside for a moment the fact that it is within the power of all Republican elites to disavow candidates who abandon basic civic duties, or to endorse their opponents. At his weekly Capitol briefing, House Speaker Paul Ryan demurred that “if [Gianforte] wins, he’s been chosen by the people of Montana,” a tautological evasion of the fact that he intends to welcome Gianforte into the House GOP conference and support him in future elections.

The press is perfectly well equipped, and equally within the bounds of good practice, to close ranks around Jacobs, hound Gianforte, demand contrition, mark him for extraordinary scrutiny. It is much less well equipped to address the threat at its root.

Republican-condoned violence against media has thrust the media’s capacity for self-preservation into conflict with its cult of performed even-handedness and performed even-handedness is winning.

All the more because of Gianforte’s victory, conservative candidates across the country know they can abuse reporters, lie about it, use political violence to raise money, and find safe harbor in the Republican cloakrooms of the United States Capitol. Yet taking all of this in, the NBC News political cheat sheet First Read lamented that the “body slam of [a] reporter is another sign of America’s broken politics.” That conclusion isn’t wrong, much as the broken wing of an airplane might send the whole vessel into a spiral dive, and, in surveying the wreckage, one could accurately exclaim that “the plane broke.”

I don’t know if Republicans broke American politics or if Republican politics is broken and endangering the whole political system, but it can’t be fixed so long as political elites can’t acknowledge or understand what the source of the failure is. Responding to a moldy sack of protoplasm who writes for the Daily Caller, CNN editor Chris Cillizza leapt to Jacobs’s defense.

I don’t get this. If you are a reporter, you should defend the rights of reporters to ask questions without fear of physical violence. https://t.co/3qqL37UdhL

— Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) May 25, 2017

This is attitudinally correct, but his incredulousness belies a misunderstanding of movement conservatism and the media outlets that the movement has spawned. With exceptions, they do not conceive of themselves as playing on the same turf, let alone by the same rules, as establishment news organizations and liberal media outlets. The fact that Republicans are defending Gianforte and conservative journalists piled on Jacobs isn’t confusing or an outgrowth of “broken politics,” but the inevitable consequence of virulent illiberalism in the American right.

On Thursday morning, the anti-Trump Republican strategist Rick Wilson wrote a bracing denunciation of those on the right who defended the assault of a reporter—though one seemingly premised on the belief that the “cultural collapse of the GOP into the Trump Troll Party” might be reversed through reason. In truth, everything that’s happened in the past year or so has conditioned conservatives to believe they will face no consequences for poor or unprincipled behavior. They write off the accurate assessments of anti-Trump Republicans like Steve Schmidt or Democrats like Senator Brian Schatz as the impotent complaints of political losers, knowing that the public will learn about the assault of a reporter as an essentially partisan spat and that centrist pundits, out of fear of bad-faith accusations of bias, will blame on broken politics instead of defending their own .

What he describes is a problem that’s partially responsible for where we are today. I know it’s hard for them to break the habit. But unless they do it this is going to continue to accelerate and it will be too late.

I guess I just don’t understand why people don’t find this more alarming. These things can get out of hand very quickly.

This isn’t normal.

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Violence by proxy
by Tom Sullivan

As this morning’s headlines attest, Republican Greg Gianforte won yesterday’s special congressional election in Montana. One of the noteworthy and little-noticed effects of his assault on Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs was, according to NBC, Gianforte raised $100,000 overnight online. One supporter told CNN the assault charge against Gianforte left her only “more ready to support Greg.”

Gianforte is hardly alone. Donald Trump stands in for many, if not most, of his perpetually aggrieved supporters in doing and saying things to political opponents they lack either the nerve, the social permission, or the protections of great wealth to do themselves. The money and support rewards Gianforte for the vicarious satisfaction they receive from violence by proxy.

Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham mocked Jacobs for reporting the attack to the police, tweeting, “Did anyone get his lunch money stolen today and then run to tell the recess monitor?” In response, Josh Barro at Business Insider writes that calling the police “when a man grabs you by the throat and slams you to the floor … is what an adult does in a civilized society.” If we were an adult society, that is:

Yet, as Kevin Glass notes, “conservatives” in the Trump era tend to think not like adults, but high-school boys, vaunting the sort of ideal of masculinity that might be imagined by a socially maladjusted 15-year-old and tolerating in our political leaders the sort of behavior that a guidance counselor would never accept.

Republicans are a party that now celebrates the bully who steals lunch money because, hey, at least he’s not the nerd who gets his lunch money stolen.

A party for the sort of men who call themselves “alpha males” without irony or accuracy. A party for the sort of women who think it’s cool and strong when men get into bar fights.

Republican voters eat it up. Their president makes every photo op, every handshake a contest for establishing dominance. This is infantile. It isn’t strength. It’s overcompensation.

When asked for comment on Gianforte’s assault of a reporter, many Republicans on Capitol Hill refused comment. Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) blamed liberals, “The left has precipitated this tense, confrontational approach throughout the country in recent months.” Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) told reporters, “It’s not appropriate behavior. Unless the reporter deserved it.” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) joked that “we didn’t have a course on body slammin’ when I went to school — I missed that course.”

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC), surprisingly, commented on the politics of rage and Trump’s hand in promoting it:

Here's @RepSanfordSC on Gianforte and politics in the age of Trump: 'There is total weirdness out there.' pic.twitter.com/Le48yCAksk— Mike DeBonis (@mikedebonis) May 25, 2017

The tacit if not overt approval of violence by proxy is symptomatic of the further hollowing out of conservatism begun decades ago. Conservative politicians, pundits and celebrities once trafficked in innuendo and dog whistles. Now the nudges and winks have largely disappeared. The “kayfabe” is no longer conscious, but ingrained both in the performers and their audience. They believe their own bullshit.

Commenting on the litany of persistent conspiracy theories, columnist Michael Gerson writes that exploitation of the Seth Rich conspiracy theories in particular are “a confirmation of the right’s deformed soul.” His Washington Post column continues:

The conservative mind, in some very visible cases, has become diseased. The movement has been seized by a kind of discrediting madness, in which conspiracy delusions figure prominently. Institutions and individuals that once served an important ideological role, providing a balance to media bias, are discrediting themselves in crucial ways. With the blessings of a president, they have abandoned the normal constraints of reason and compassion. They have allowed political polarization to reach their hearts, and harden them. They have allowed polarization to dominate their minds, and empty them.

Conspiracy theories often involve a kind of dehumanization. Human tragedy is made secondary — something to be exploited rather than mourned. The narrative of conspiracy takes precedence over the meaning of a life and the suffering of a family. A human being is made into an ideological prop and used on someone else’s stage. As the Rich family has attested, the pain inflicted is quite real.

They are a party gone mad, and led by a child.

It’s worse than we could have imagined

by digby

This parochial moron trying to talk Europe into pulling way from the US security umbrella. He seems to think it’s supposed to be a profit center. They thought it was a way to keep the world from disintegrating into worldwide conflagration. Again.

Expectations were low for the European leg of President Trump’s first trip abroad, but it turns out they weren’t low enough.

Officials had briefed reporters that the trip’s highlight would be a speech in which Trump endorses Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which states that the NATO allies would treat an attack on one member as an attack on them all—the very essence of “collective defense.”

For most presidents, this is a rather low bar akin to the proclamation, in their annual address to Congress, that the state of the union is strong. But Donald Trump, in his brief speech on Thursday at NATO’s new headquarters, did not clear even this basic hurdle of American leadership.

European leaders had been nervous about this visit, well-aware of Trump’s repeated statements that NATO is “obsolete” and that he might not defend a NATO ally from attack if it’s fallen short of commitments on defense spending—like some Trump Tower tenant delinquent on his rent. He made most of those statements during the 2016 campaign, but even since taking office, he hadn’t clarified his stance on the alliance. Trump has said that NATO is no longer obsolete since it has now declared a policy against terrorism—for which he has taken credit—ignoring the fact that the non-American members adopted such a policy in 2002 and have since lost 1,000 troops in the war on terrorists in Afghanistan. But the allied leaders have stayed mum on this, hoping that giving Trump a rhetorical win, with an apparent nod to his wisdom, would make him a more amenable partner.

Apparently their modest hopes were overwrought. Trump began his eight-minute speech noting the two monuments in the new courtyard—shards of the Berlin Wall and the World Trade Center—as symbols of “remembrance and resolve.” He even recalled that, after the Sept. 11 attacks, the NATO allies responded swiftly by invoking Article 5, the first and so far only time any member had done so since the treaty’s signing in 1949.

But then he shifted to scolding the allies for their “chronic underpayments” on defense, noting that 23 of NATO’s 28 members have failed to meet an obligation to spend 2 percent of their GDP for their military forces. “This is not fair to the people and taxpayers of the United States,” Trump said, echoing the “America First” sentiment of his base back home, adding that these nations also “owe massive amounts of money for past years.”

Trump is hardly the first American president to call on allies to pony up more for their own defenses—President Jimmy Carter demanded that they each devote 3 percent of GDP to the military—and some allies have started spending more in part due to this recent pressure. But Trump is the first president to refrain from assuring the allies that he views the defense of Europe as a vital American interest.

His silence on this matter also puts him at odds with his secretary of defense, secretary of state, and national security adviser, who have all gone out of their way to express this commitment—reviving the question of just who controls U.S. foreign policy. Since the start of his presidency, Trump’s advisers have waged a power struggle over this issue in particular: nationalism vs. globalism, leadership of the free world vs. America First. His speech in Brussels suggests that this struggle is still raging.

Any hope people had that he would grow into the job was ill-founded. He has no capacity to grow or learn.

The word is that his military and nat-sec advisers all wanted him to confirm the US commitment to Article 5. He did not. He clearly believes that he has no loyalty to long time allies and he’s just going to tear up these security alliances as easily as he plans to tear up trade agreements. He’s too dim-witted to understand the ramifications and nobody can control him.

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Consciousness of guilt

by digby

Apparently, the whole White House was trying to strong arm the FBI into dropping the Russia probe. Seems they were quite worried about it. I wonder why?

President Donald Trump isn’t the only one in the White House who could be caught in a compromising position by James Comey’s secret memos. The president’s chief of staff is worried he could be soon in the crosshairs, as well.

Comey, the former FBI director who was fired earlier this month by Trump, took detailed notes of his interactions with the president and senior Trump administration officials in order to properly document conversations that were on the verge of improper.

Three White House officials told The Daily Beast that Chief of Staff Reince Priebus has privately expressed worry about a possible Comey memo specifically involving one of their reported chats, and how it might play in the press and to investigators.

“Nervous laughter,” one official succinctly characterized Priebus’ demeanor in the midst of recent revelations.

In late February—long before Trump fired Comey over the “this Russia thing”—Priebus had reportedly already acted on the president’s behalf in trying to use the FBI to quash the Trump-Russia news.

According to CNN, Priebus asked Comey and his then-top deputy, Andrew McCabe, on Feb. 15 to refute news reports about conversations between Trump campaign staff and Russian government officials. Comey and McCabe reportedly refused. The White House denied the story at the time.

That conversation happened the day after President Trump reportedly asked Comey to dial back the bureau’s investigation of retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s ousted, and preferred, national security adviser. As first reported by The New York Times, the former FBI director subsequently documented that conversation in a memo that leaked last week.

This week, The Washington Post reported Trump had been unsuccessful in persuading two of the most senior U.S. intelligence officials to publicly deny the existence of evidence linking his 2016 campaign to Russian efforts to undermine the American political process. Trump’s request was made after Comey informed the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI was investigating.

Senior Trump aides recounted to The Daily Beast the shockwaves and “sustained panic,” as one official described it, that news of the initial Comey memo sent through the administration and Trump’s political inner circle. Along with the chaos and continued frustrations that came with attempting to manage the fallout, there was an immediate unease expressed by senior staffers, including Priebus, that more damning memos could be revealed in the coming weeks, if not days.

Did it not occur to any of these people that this was wrong? Good lord, the whole crew is as dumb as their boss.

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THIS is Trumpism

by digby

The beating heart of it, poisonous essence, the attitude that shapes his appeal and the beliefs of those who follow him:

Last month, the Missoulian newspaper took Gianforte to task for his attitude toward the press. At an event hosted by the Advancing Conservatism Society, an audience member reportedly said: “Our biggest enemy is the news media. How can we rein in the news media?” 

Gianforte responded by pointing at a reporter and saying: “We have someone right here. It seems like there is more of us than there is of him.” Gianforte later told the Billings Gazette that his comments were a joke.

Very funny. A month later he assaulted a reporter.

This isn’t normal people. None of this is normal.

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When you want the fake news to be the truth

by digby

… you’ll believe it, even if you know better.

The story about James Comey believing a fake Russian document implicating Hillary Clinton in a conspiracy with Loretta Lynch, thus propelling him to hold his July press conference is just depressing. We sort of knew the outlines of this before but this Washington Post story fleshes out the details:

The Russian document cited a supposed email describing how then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch had privately assured someone in the Clinton campaign that the email investigation would not push too deeply into the matter. If true, the revelation of such an understanding would have undermined the integrity of the FBI’s investigation.

Current and former officials have said that Comey relied on the document in making his July decision to announce on his own, without Justice Department involvement, that the investigation was over. That public announcement — in which he criticized Clinton and made extensive comments about the evidence — set in motion a chain of other FBI moves that Democrats now say helped Trump win the presidential election.

But according to the FBI’s own assessment, the document was bad intelligence — and according to people familiar with its contents, possibly even a fake sent to confuse the bureau. The Americans mentioned in the Russian document insist they do not know each other, do not speak to each other and never had any conversations remotely like the ones described in the document. Investigators have long doubted its veracity, and by August the FBI had concluded it was unreliable.

Comey’s defenders are saying this justifies his actions last summer. But honestly, the man should have known better. By October everyone at the FBI did so there was no good reason for him to do what he did to tilt the election.  But by all means lets not make a federal case out of Russian meddling because what could go wrong?

And yeah, a lot of people fell for this stuff. If my social media is any indication, they still are.

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Nice little NATO you have here …

by digby

What an asshole:

*Look at their faces* and the whispering as Trump admonishes leaders over NATO financial obligations. pic.twitter.com/gLCYgKTdi3

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) May 25, 2017

Did Trump just shove another NATO leader to be in the front of the group? pic.twitter.com/bL1r2auELd

— Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) May 25, 2017

This is just embarrassing. He went to the Middle East and said not a word about human rights. Now he’s in Europe basically threatening to break some legs if they don’t pay the vig.

Here’s the NYTimes on the talks yesterday:

President Trump, a blunt critic of the European Union during his campaign for the White House, received a chilly reception from his European counterparts on Thursday as they began meetings in Brussels, clashing over trade, climate and the best way to confront Russia.

The president’s first meeting with the Continent’s leaders began with officials from the United States and Europe saying nothing to each other. After being welcomed to Brussels, Mr. Trump said, “Thank you very much,” but he was otherwise silent as he gazed at the cameras across the room.

Donald Tusk, who represents the leaders of the bloc’s 28 member states as president of the European Council, made it clear after the morning meeting that there had been several areas of disagreement.

“Some issues remained open like climate and trade,” Mr. Tusk told reporters shortly after the meeting at European Union headquarters in Brussels. “And I am not 100 percent sure that we can say today — ‘we’ means Mr. President and myself — that we have a common position, common opinion, about Russia.”

Mr. Trump and Mr. Tusk differed over the intentions and policies of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, an increasing source of anxiety in Europe in light of the country’s apparent attempts to meddle in elections in Europe and the United States, and its increasingly assertive foreign policy, notably in Ukraine.

Mr. Tusk expressed a far more skeptical view of the Russians in the talks, according to a person with direct knowledge of the meeting who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were held privately.

It looks like everyone can relax about this alleged “new cold war.” Trump’s holding fast on his high opinion of Russian leadership and policies, no matter what. Europe seems to be our new common enemy. But then this isn’t really new, is it? The right has been hostile to Europe for many moons. Recall Michael Ledeen’s famous essay arguing for the US to declare war on Germany and France for failing to back the invasion of Iraq. Ledeen is the co-author of Michael Flynn’s book “Fear of Flight.”

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Trump’s loose lips are changing the world and not in a good way

by digby

I wrote about his most recently revealed indiscretions for Salon this morning:

Has there ever been a more indiscreet world leader than Donald Trump? We knew in the campaign that he had a big mouth when he was caught on tape bragging about assaulting women and getting away with it, but very few people would have predicted that this propensity to discuss private matters in wildly inappropriate contexts would extend to classified intelligence.

After all, month after month he excoriated Hillary Clinton for allowing some confidential emails to be inadvertently sent over her personal email server when she was secretary of state. He said it disqualified her, in fact, and “she should not have been allowed” to run for president because of it.

Trump told Clinton to her face that if he were president she would be in jail:

Trump to Clinton: “You’d be in jail” if I were president. More: https://t.co/f6tCHdLkzn #debate #Decision2016 https://t.co/ihIIjBoDcg

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 10, 2016

Well, Donald Trump is the president now and several different government entities are investigating his campaign and administration. And he’s been shamelessly blurting out highly sensitive intelligence to foreign adversaries, unstable tyrants and even the press without a second thought.

Trump felt the need to meet with the Russian ambassador and the foreign minister at the behest of Vladimir Putin and in the course of their conversation he bragged that he had “great intel” and proceeded to expose a foreign ally’s asset by giving them highly sensitive “code-word” intelligence without the ally’s permission. As former CIA chief John Brennan explained in testimony before Congress this week, while it’s true that a president has the authority to declassify information, he is supposed to follow protocols:

The first [protocol] is that this kind of intelligence is not shared with visiting foreign ministers or local ambassadors. It’s shared through intelligence channels. The second is that, before sharing any classified intelligence with foreign partners, it has to go back to the originating agency to ensure that revealing it won’t compromise sources, methods and future collection capabilities.

There has never been a need for a protocol to guide a proudly ignorant, inexperienced president with a pathological need to brag to everyone he meets, since nobody anticipated such a thing before. Now we know.

And nobody anticipated that this same president would visit the foreign ally he exposed and confirm to reporters from all over the world that it had been the source of that intelligence. But Trump did that too.

And while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu put on a good face for the cameras, the effect on the relationship has been profound. After the breach was reported, BuzzFeed spoke to two Israeli intelligence officials who said that this was their worst fear confirmed. One explained, “There has to be trust for this sort of arrangement. I cannot speak for Israel’s entire security apparatus, but I would not trust a partner who shared intelligence without coordinating it with us first.”

Foreign Policy reported that the Israeli defense minister admitted that the two countries have since revised their “protocols” and when asked what they were he tartly replied, “Not everything needs to be discussed in the media; some things need to be talked about in closed rooms.” A certain president shouldn’t talk about such things in closed rooms either, since he is incapable of understanding protocols for anything.

But that wasn’t the only report we had this week of Donald Trump’s loose lips putting national security in danger. The Intercept released a transcript of the Trump’s recent phone call with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. (I wrote about it here.) The actual words were worse than we knew. Not only did the president effusively compliment Duterte on his murderous drug war, he also insulted former President Barack Obama for failing to be equally impressed.

The two leaders discussed the threat from North Korea, mused about the mental state of Kim Jong-un and batted around the idea that nuclear war might end up being necessary. Trump said he hoped the Chinese would take care of it but promised that if they didn’t the U.S. would. Then he shared some military secrets with a foreign leader widely seen as unbalanced and untrustworthy:

We have two submarines – the best in the world – we have two nuclear submarines – not that we want to use them at all. I’ve never seen anything like they are but we don’t have to use this but [Kim] could be crazy so we will see what happens.

According to BuzzFeed, the Pentagon was in shock:

“We never talk about subs!” three officials told BuzzFeed News, referring to the military’s belief that keeping submarines’ movements secret is key to their mission.

While the US military will frequently announce the deployment of aircraft carriers, it is far more careful when discussing the movement of nuclear submarines. Carriers are hard to miss, and that, in part, is a reason the US military deploys them. They are a physical show of force. Submarines are, at times, a furtive complement to the carriers, a hard-to-detect means of strategic deterrence.

Trump, Duterte, Kim Jong-un and nuclear weapons. What could go wrong?

There are dozens of reasons why America’s allies and adversaries alike are starting to panic a little bit about Donald Trump serving as the supposed leader of the free world. Until now, despite major misgivings, it was not entirely clear whether Trump might grow into the job or whether American institutions and expertise would be able to guide his behavior. After four months it seems clear that’s not as easy as everyone hoped.

In this context, the fact that U.S. officials apparently leaked the identity of the accused Manchester bomber to the press before U.K. authorities were ready to do so was received with sharp irritation by the British government. If this had happened under any other administration, the misunderstanding between two close allies would likely have been handled quietly. But it’s obvious that the gusher of leaks throughout the government and at high levels of the White House has other countries spooked.

Along with the president’s ongoing inability to understand and respect the seriousness of classified intelligence, this lack of trust in the United States government’s basic competence and predictability is making the world order as we’ve known it for the last 60 years suddenly feel very unstable. It will be interesting to see whether the NATO meeting being held over the next few days can provide any sense of reassurance.

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