Washington Post:
The Washington Post has obtained transcripts of two conversations President Trump had with foreign leaders: one with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and another with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
The transcripts were prepared by the White House but have not been released. The Post is publishing reproductions rather than original documents in order to protect sources. The reproductions below also include minor spelling and grammatical mistakes that appeared in the documents.
There is a LOT in these transcripts, and there has been much said about them.
For the politically embarrassing damage to Trump, Huffington Post has a good analysis.
But aside from the political embarrassment for Trump, this leak creates another problem:
National Review:
The Washington Post’s publication of transcripts detailing President Trump’s calls with foreign leaders sets a dangerous precedent.
...the Washington Post published leaked transcripts of President Trump’s January phone calls with the leaders of Mexico and Australia. At the time of the calls, many of their key details were leaked to the Post, which reported on them extensively. So why release the full transcripts now?
One reason is that they show Trump saying all sorts of embarrassing things. He calls New Hampshire a “drug-infested den.” He acknowledges that his promise to get Mexico to pay for a border wall has left him cornered, and he describes the wall as, in actuality, “the least important thing that we are talking about.” It is worth noting that Trump did not threaten to send troops to Mexico, as had been previously reported. But he did tell President Enrique Pena Nieto that America was “willing to help” Mexico fight the “pretty tough hombres” who run its powerful drug cartels.
This could all have been reported in a regular article. Publishing full transcripts of phone calls including the comments of foreign leaders, however, is bad for the country. They should not have been leaked — that is the first, most egregious problem — and they should not have been published. Tommy Vietor, the spokesman for the National Security Council during President Obama’s second term, wrote on Twitter that, “I would’ve lost my mind if transcripts of Obama’s calls to foreign leaders leaked.” And he would have been well within his rights to do so.
Presidents need to be able to converse openly, honestly, and bluntly with foreign leaders. They sometimes need to reveal things that they cannot say publicly. This allows them to develop both personal and working relationships. Though it can be unpleasant to contemplate, politicians need this kind of flexibility to move past public pronouncements and get down to their nations’ real interests.
Neither Trump nor his foreign counterparts can have such flexibility in their mutual dealings if they fear that their remarks will be leaked to the press and then to the public.Ultimately, when you get down to the very heart of this, even the impact on foreign leaders is about the same issue which Trump has: political embarrassment. The root of that embarrassment is in one simple fact: They are not being completely honest with their own people.
For example, the Post’s transcript shows that Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull of Australia told President Trump that he thinks the Germans made a huge mistake in letting in so many refugees. Turnbull even linked that decision to the Brexit vote in Britain. He’ll now have to answer for that comment at home and whenever he next meets with Angela Merkel, the German chancellor. Similarly, the Post quotes President Peña Nieto musing about “creative ways” to pay for Trump’s border wall. In public, Nieto’s position is far more intransigent, but it is a good thing that he was able to level with our president and explain the constraints of his own political situation. In the future, Turnbull, Nieto, and every other foreign leader will think twice before opening up.
Kudos to the Washington Post for shining light on the cockroaches running the countries of the world.
In other news...
Raw Story:
The lightning-fast ascent and political invincibility of Donald Trump has left many experts baffled and wondering, “How did we get here?” Any accurate and sufficient answer to that question must not only focus on Trump himself, but also on his uniquely loyal supporters.It doesn't take long to find the first problem with this story. "Loyal supporters" is a limited bunch, considering only 33% of American voters still approve of him. These aren't the people who pushed him over the top.
Continuing:
Although analyses and studies by psychologists and neuroscientists have provided many thought-provoking explanations for his enduring support, the accounts of different experts often vary greatly, sometimes overlapping and other times conflicting.In other words, the science on Trump support isn't settled. This should be painfully obvious to any reasonable human being, since you are looking for a psychological analysis for motivations for an action taken by 10's of millions of people. A proper psychological analysis on that many people would take decades and be prohibitively expensive to fund.
In summary, the rest of this article isn't really scientific. But why let a good opportunity to bash Trump's supporters go by?
So let's look at this so-called analysis. The reasons people voted for Trump are:
1. Authoritarian Personality SyndromeIn other words, they are fascists.
2. Social dominance orientation
3. Prejudice
4. Intergroup contactThey are racists.
5. Relative deprivationThey suffer from wealth envy.
It must be nice to take a political analysis that Paul Krugman could have written, and then wrap it in the respectable veneer of science, even though the science hasn't really proven anything.
If this story had been written about blacks or women, the media would be howling with indignation. To the media and the intelligentsia that wrote this small-minded garbage, it is ok to bash Trump's supporters, because "those people" are "less than human". If you use the rhetoric of racism dressed up in big words, you just might be the redneck you despise so much.
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