Muhammad bin Salman’s Khashoggi Gambit: The Trump Doctrine in Action

by 2:41 pm. It has 269 Comments.

The actual Trump Doctrine, which we’ve covered here at Balloon Juice extensively since the President gave his first campaign speech about national-security and foreign policy back in April 2016, is:

America’s allies are taking advantage of our treaty and other obligations in the national security space; America’s allies and peer competitors are ripping the US off through our trade agreements; the US should go it alone if it can’t renegotiate better deals; and only a President Trump could guarantee that the US would be treated fairly – or else. That only a President Trump could guarantee that the US would be treated fairly, whether in national security arrangements or global trade, was simply an extension of one of the major, if not the major theme of his campaign: Donald Trump would be treated fairly or else and only Donald Trump could guarantee that Americans, especially the forgotten men and women as he phrased it, would be treated fairly or else.

That the US will be treated fairly or else, and that only a President Trump could guarantee that happening became the central, unifying theme of his national security and foreign policy approach was actually a stroke of strategic communication genius. A significant amount of the President’s initial strategic communication approach was through tying his primary opponents, the Republican National Committee, and the broadcast and cable news networks in knots about treating him fairly. This included trying to get Megyn Kelly removed from debate moderation after he felt she treated him badly, as well as actually dropping out of a GOP primary debate on Fox News and holding a competing charity event for veterans because he did not like that Fox wouldn’t comply with his demands. And if they failed to do so he’d deal with them harshly. Then candidate Trump threatened his fellow primary opponents and the RNC by making it clear that if he didn’t feel he was being treated fairly by them, then the “or else” would be his running as an independent candidate, thereby splitting the Republican vote for president, and handing the election to the then presumed Democratic front runner Hillary Clinton.

By making this the dominant theme of his national security and foreign policy approach, he was able to make a singular through line for his campaign – “I, Donald Trump, will be treated fairly or else by the GOP, the RNC, and the news media; only I, Donald Trump, can guarantee that you the forgotten men and women of America are treated fairly in regards to both domestic politics and foreign policy; and only I, Donald Trump, can guarantee that the US will be treated fairly or else there will be serious and severe repercussions for the GOP, the RNC, the news media, elected and appointed officials, and America’s allies, partners, and peer competitors”. Here was the simple through line to connect Make America Great Again both domestically and internationally by placing America first. It is also the essence of the real Trump Doctrine: President Trump and by extension the forgotten men and women of America, as well as America itself, will be treated fairly or else.

Muhammad bin Salman’s strategy for the wetwork operation against Jamal Khashoggi is to leverage the Trump Doctrine in order to allow him to get away with having Khashoggi to be vanished by rendition, or as is now reported and most likely to have happened, extra-judicially executed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The Crown Prince, who is popularly known as MBS, like so many other authoritarian and autocratic foreign leaders, has figured out that the President makes his decisions on whether he feels he is being treated fairly. If he feels that he is, then one can pretty much do whatever they want. If he feels that he isn’t, then the President goes on the offensive to deliver the “or else”. MBS believes he can get away with this because the President has publicly made it clear that as long as the Saudis spend money purchasing his properties or at his properties, then he likes them because they are treating him fairly.

At one of his 2015 campaign rallies the President said:

Saudi Arabia, I get along with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.

The Permanent Saudi Mission to the UN is housed in Trump World Tower across the street from the UN. The Kingdom owns the entire 45th floor. The Trump Tower in Chicago is running a profit, as is the Trump International Hotel and Tower in New York, largely because of bookings from the Saudis. Even as almost all the other Trump branded properties posted significant losses, especially his beloved Scottish golf courses. Jared Kushner has also been seeking financing from the Saudis for his personal business interests. At this time it appears that funding stream did not come through. The lack of funding, however, has not kept the Crown Prince from bragging that he has Jared in his pocket, which, once reported, MBS denied.

Muhammad bin Salman is gambling that because the Saudis spend lavishly on the President’s private business interests, and that because the President doesn’t understand the terms of what the Saudis have negotiated in regard to their potential purchases of US military equipment, which are really just a bunch of letters of intent that have yet to be finalized., that the President will provide him with the plausible deniability he needs to get away with having Khashoggi vanished and mist likely extra-judicially executed. Despite the fact that MBS negotiated a huge discount from Jared “The Hidden Genius” Kushner and guarantees that approximately 50% of the weapons would be built in Saudi Arabia, which means that the sale, if it were actually finalized, would not significantly increase US manufacturing or jobs.

Right on schedule this morning the President announced that Saudi King Salman, who is actually just an infirm figure head, stated the Saudis didn’t do anything to Khashoggi, but it could have been rogue killers.

You know, rogue killers who just happened to be traveling on Saudi Arabian diplomatic passports, on Saudi Arabian government jets, one of whom was an autopsy specialist who happened to pack his bone saw, who just happened to be hanging out at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul when Jamal Khashoggi walked in to get his official Saudi marriage documents signed, and who just so happened decided that Khashoggi looked like a good guy to practice a little recreational wetwork and improvisational autopsying on. Which would, I suppose, explain, why the Saudi Arabians had a professional cleaning team in their Istanbul consulate this morning, which left shortly before the Turkish police were allowed to enter the building.

As long as the President places being treated fairly, and specifically his subjective understanding of being personally treated fairly, as the central consideration of US policy, we will see more of this type of behavior from the authoritarians, autocrats, despots, tyrants, neo-nationalists, and neo-fascists that the President finds so admirable. During his 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl, he all but gave Putin a green light, and anyone else who was paying attention and might have similar interests, to keep assassinating people – from political rivals to opposition figures to journalists to defectors from Russia’s intelligence services – as long as they’re not American citizens and the wet work doesn’t take place in the US.

While there is an old political science/international relations axiom that state’s don’t have friends, they have interests, the Trump Doctrine has turned the US into a transactional state. A transactional state being run by the head of an ongoing white collar criminal and organized criminal enterprise. It is no surprise that authoritarians and aspiring authoritarians like Muhammad bin Salman are developing strategies that leverage the treat the President fairly part of the Trump Doctrine to get away with whatever they want in order to avoid the “or else” response.

We are off the looking glass and through the map.

Open thread!


Untreated Mental Illness is Not a Joke. Nor a Political Statement.

by 2:28 pm. It has 185 Comments.

Kanye West went to the White House today to meet and have lunch with the President, supposedly about prison reform. Prior to lunch, he and the President held an impromptu press gaggle in the Oval Office. I watched this live, except for the final couple of minutes as I had to take care of something. West, both just speaking off the cuff, as well as taking questions from the White House press corps as if he actually had any idea what he was talking about, was completely out of control. Including referencing his mental health issues and his IQ. Here’s the video of almost the full ten minutes of Kanye ranting and raving about everything from how the 13th Amendment needs to be repealed to do away with slavery (which is what the 13th Amendment does except for, in practical purposes, convicted, incarcerated prisoners), crime and violence in Chicago, manliness, his mental illness, his IQ, and a hydrogen powered airplane among other topics. And Jim Brown was there. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure Jim Brown knew why by the time this was all over.

Warning! This is unpleasant to watch. Warning!

Ali Velshi and Stephanie Ruhle were a bit flabbergasted…

Apparently so was someone working either for the President or in the White House press corps.

Kanye’s antics have now made him a security threat to the United States.

I would not take this bet.

Also, the Oval Office is a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility. As is much of the West Wing. How in the name of anyone’s Deity or Deities was Kanye allowed to bring his cellphone into the West Wing, let alone the Oval Office? This, in and of itself, is a major security breach. Of course letting a person with untreated mental illness because he’s chosen to stop taking his medication within arms’ length of the President is a major security breach as well.

Aside from the obvious inanity on display here, mental illness and untreated mental illness is not a joke. If you or a loved one or a close friend needs help, here are some resources:

Here’s the link to the National Institute of Mental Health’s help for mental illnesses page.

Here’s the link to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Open thread!

 


A Few Thoughts on Senators Heitkamp and Murkowski

by 4:41 pm. It has 134 Comments.

While we wait for Senator Collins to finish the longest public statement of “I’m voting yes” ever given in the English or any other language, I think it is important to take a moment and revisit the two much more courageous votes and statements of Senators Heitkamp and Murkowski. Especially so in the wake of Senator Flake’s weeklong end of summer stock reenactment of Hamlet that got so much press attention.

Here is Senator Murkowski’s statement to the press shortly after she voted no this morning during the cloture vote on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination.

And here is Senator Heitkamp’s, which I also posted yesterday:

Senators Heitkamp’s and Murkowski’s votes and their statements are important for several reasons. Senator Heitkamp is in the final weeks of her re-election campaign and it remains to be seen whether or not this will help or hinder her in seeking another term in the Senate. Senator Murkowski is not up for re-election until 2022. Despite the stated and reported opposition by her Native Alaskan constituents, as well as Alaska’s governor and lieutenant governor to Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, her re-election is far enough off that she could have just kept quiet and voted along with the GOP majority in the Senate and it wouldn’t have come back to bite her if she does choose to run again in 2022. Instead she now has Alaska’s premier ankle biter and matriarch of the state’s most dysfunctionally petty crime family calling out the other attack dogs in an attempt to claw out another fifteen minutes of fame.

What Senator’s Heitkamp and Murkowski have done isn’t just cast a no vote. Read their statements as to why. Neither of them are denying that the President, regardless of what they may or may not think about the election of 2016 and his de facto legitimacy as a result of what occurred in that election, has the de jure responsibility and authority to nominate who he wants to the Supreme Court based on whatever process he establishes to arrive at the nominee. Rather they are both stating flatly that the issue here is that Judge Kavanaugh is not the right nominee at this moment in political and social time in the US. Neither are saying they wouldn’t seriously consider a different nominee with an open mind. This is important. Neither Senator Heitkamp or Murkowski are doing what Senators McConnell, McCain, Cruz, and others did during the 2016 election when they stated that not only would Judge Garland not get a meeting, let alone a hearing or up and down vote to fill the vacancy left by Justice Scalia’s death, but that if Secretary Clinton were elected that they would hold that Supreme Court seat open for as long as the GOP held the majority in the Senate or as long as a Democratic majority in the Senate kept the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in place. Instead they are simply stating that because of the circumstances and politics around this nomination and the current state of American politics and society, for the good of the Supreme Court, the Senate, and the US, Judge Kavanaugh was just not the right person to fill the current vacancy at this time.

Senator Heitkamp’s and Murkowski’s stated reasons for voting no also gets at another important point that we all too frequently ignore, if we even recognize it at all. Specifically that the purpose of the political processes that have been established and then evolved over time, and that are right now being severely stress tested, are the mechanisms that transform what may be politically unpalatable into government and governance that is politically palatable. Part of what Senators Heitkamp and Murkowski took a stand for, in addition to accepting Dr. Blasey’s testimony of what she had to endure in 1982, was the recognition that the US cannot continue going forward where the politics of might makes right, which is at the heart of all forms of fascism, regardless of whether it is a majority or a minority that has that might at any given moment in time, rules the day. They recognize that what the President, Don McGahn the White House Counsel, Leonard Leo who runs the Federalist Society and whose dark money networks bankroll the Judicial Crisis Network, and Senators McConnell, Grassley, Cornyn, Hatch, etc have done with judicial nominations – and in the case of the Republican senators done so going back to the Obama administration –  has gone way past the point where the process can be used to transform the politically unpalatable into palatable government and governance.

Senators Heitkamp and Murkowski’s statements and the actions backing them up should sound as a clarion call that the system is fast approaching, if not already at, a breaking point. The subtext of their remarks is a recognition that the majority of Americans who did not vote for the President, despite his electoral college victory, or for either the GOP majorities in the House and the Senate, are fast approaching the point where Republican minoratarian rule, despite its constitutional/de jure legitimacy, is approaching the point of no return. That the relentless pursuit of power at all costs, whether through gerrymandering and voter suppression, manipulating and breaking the rules of the House and the Senate begun by Speaker Gingrich and perfected by Senator McConnell, packing the Federal courts, and/or the attempt to govern solely to the delight and enthusiasm of the President’s electorally minority base of white, largely evangelical and traditionalist Christians in the attempt to create a herrenvolk democracy, isn’t going to simply lock in permanent Republican control over the Federal government. It is going to irreparably break the Federal government and the United States polity and society.

While Senators Heitkamp’s and Murkowski’s stands will ultimately not be enough to stop Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination, the importance of their actions should be recognized nonetheless. They didn’t attempt to demonstrate just how much more moral than everyone else they are while predictably doing what they always do, like Senator Flake who always folds like a cheap suit after giving a sad speech with a crestfallen look on his face. Nor did they attempt to once again demonstrate how thoughtfully moderate they are, while always voting with the most conservative members of the Senate Republican caucus like Senator Collins. Instead they recognized that what the US Senate, the world’s greatest deliberative country club, actually needed was leadership. Not kabuki theater or crocodile tears or a political dance of the seven veils. What we’ve seen this week is a contrast between two senators – Heitkamp and Murkowski – who recognize and understand what leadership is and those who don’t – Flake and Collins. Leadership, either formal or informal, is doing the hard things when everyone is watching, not talking about doing the hard things and then not doing them because everyone is watching and someone might get mad at you.

As one of my professional forebears, Dr. Bernard Fall, so accurately observed in 1964 (emphasis mine):

Civic action is not the construction of privies or the distribution of antimalarial sprays. One can’t fight an ideology; one can’t fight a militant doctrine with better privies. Yet this is done constantly. One side says, “land reform,” and the other side says, “better culverts.” One side says, “We are going to kill all those nasty village chiefs and landlords.” The other side says, “Yes, but look, we want to give you prize pigs to improve your strain.” These arguments just do not match. Simple but adequate appeals will have to be found sooner or later.

Whether they recognize it or not, Senators Heitkamp’s and Murkowski’s actions and statements indicate that they recognize that the US has reached the point when the political arguments just don’t match anymore. And that sooner or later simple, but adequate appeals to resolve these serious problems will have to be found. Sooner or later…

A political battle has been lost, the larger political war for both the nature and the future of the US goes on. Check to make sure you’re registered to vote. Pester all your friends to make sure they’re registered to vote. Pester all your friends to make sure they pester all of their friends to make sure they’re registered to vote. Then vote. Pester all your friends to make sure they vote. And pester all of your friends to pester all of their friends to make sure they vote. 

Open thread!


The Parameters of the Reopened Kavanaugh Background Investigation Have Been Expanded

by 4:26 pm. It has 245 Comments.

On Saturday night I posted this comment in a reply to smintheus who was expressing concerns over the reported constraints on the reopened Kavanaugh background investigation.

1) This, like every other one of these too cute by half maneuvers they pull, is going to blow up in their faces. This actually increases the pressure on Flake, not reduces it. Flake made it clear that the only limit on the investigation was a week, which isn’t actually a problem for the FBI when conducting a priority Special Presidential (Directed Background) Investigation (SPIN). Basically they’re humiliating Flake. That didn’t work out so well for them last week. Flake and Coons are appearing together on 60 Minutes tomorrow night and I guarantee they’ll be asked about this.

2) You wan’t to make Avenatti go away or, at least, chill him out as much as possible. This has just pissed him off more. He’s already scheduled to appear with his client on at least one Sunday show tomorrow. I realize that McGahn has gotten used to dealing with the walking dead that have been the President’s legal team over the past 19 months or so, but Avenatti is in a whole different league than past their primes Dowd and Giuliani and a never was like Sekulow. All they’ve done is waved a big red flag in front of an already angry bull. They seem to have forgotten that he already set the conditions that ended with Michael Cohen pleading guilty in Federal court in an allocution that inames the President as his unindicted co-conspirator.

Just as they completely misplayed their hand over and over and over again last week, they’ve decided to get a head start on doing so next week.

As I’ve written here several times, there is a lot of time between now and next Friday. And then there will be a lot of time between the initial procedural vote by the whole Senate and when they hold the final vote 72 hours later. Every time these morons have a chance to actually help themselves by not making things worse, their instinct is to make things worse.

NBC News has now confirmed earlier reporting by The New York Times that while the one week time constraint remains, the other parameters that limited who the FBI may interview, as well as the overall scope of the background investigation,

The real reason for this is that Senator Jeff Flake made it public in a televised interview this morning that a pro-forma, limited reopened background would not serve the needs of the country.

The removal of the constraints on the scope of the investigation are all about trying to ensure that Senator Flake can get to yes in his support for Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination. And because Senator Flake is providing top cover for Senators Murkowski and Collins, and possibly Senators Manchin and Heitkamp, the White House and Senator McConnell are going to do everything possible to get him to move to yes.

This is also why Senator McConnell just concluded a Majority Leader’s floor speech excoriating the Democratic senators, and specifically Senator Feinstein, over how Dr. Blasey’s accusations against Judge Kavanaugh were handled. Senator McConnell has now publicly staked out that his official position is that this whole thing is a conspiracy among and between Senator Feinstein, the other Democratic Senators, including Senator Schumer the minority leader, Dr. Blasey’s attorney who was recommended by someone on Senator Feinstein’s staff. And why he’s asserting that there will be a vote on Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination this week.

With the constraints on the scope of the FBI’s reopened background investigation, the only vote the Senate may be able to take this week would be the initial procedural vote sometime on Friday to move to the final vote 72 hours laters, which would be Monday.

Time is not Judge Kavanaugh’s friend right now. Nor Senator McConnell’s or the President’s. With the removal of the constraints on the scope lifted, and former classmates of Judge Kavanaugh’s coming out of the woodwork about his drinking problems in college, pressure is going to grow on Senator Flake in regard to the statement he made on 60 Minutes last night that if Judge Kavanaugh lied during his confirmation hearings, including the hearing last week, that his nomination must be voted down.

One final, important point: the FBI does not want to be left holding the bag on this! Regardless of the actual partisan political registrations/affiliations and/or ideological preferences of the leadership at the FBI, right now the FBI is hoping that the Democrats take at least the House, if not also the Senate, in the midterm elections next month. They are hoping this happens so that they can get some institutional top cover from Congress to both remove and check the political pressure that the President and his surrogates in Congress have been placing on the FBI because of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation. The last thing the FBI’s leadership wants right now is to replace angry, conspiratorial Republicans running the House and/or the Senate with angry Democrats that are going to shred them over a White House and Senate majority GOP leadership constrained and therefore botched background investigation into Judge Kavanaugh. That’s why there were repeated leaks about this over the weekend. As I’ve written here repeatedly: the US Intelligence Community will leak when it is in its strategic interest to do so. These leaks were in the FBI’s strategic interest and they accomplished the objective. They got the constraints on the scope removed.

Open thread!


Prop Humor is Really Not Bibi Netanyahu’s Forte: UN General Assembly Edition

by 5:46 pm. It has 161 Comments.

Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu addressed this year’s UN General Assembly. As he does every time he makes one of these addresses, he had visual aids. Today’s were pictures of Iran’s secret atomic warehouse.

From Ha’aretz:

 Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu revealed a secret Iranian nuclear storage facility in Tehran and hidden missiles in Beirut during his address at the United Nations’ General Assembly 73rd session on Thursday.

The Israeli prime minister said the Iranian facility contains technology for Iran’s nuclear program, adding that Iran “took this radioactive material and spread it around Tehran like Nutella.”

Netanyahu said that Iran removed 15kg of radioactive material from the warehouse last month, and that it contained up to 300 tons of nuclear-related material. Netanyahu called on the IAEA to inspect the facility immediately.

“I have a message for tyrants of Tehran – Israel knows what you’re doing,” Netanyahu said. He added that Israel will continue to act against Iran – “also in Syria and also in Iraq.”

There’s only one problem, it’s a Persian carpet cleaners. Apparently Israel does not know what Iran is doing.

Remember to steam clean regularly!

We now return you to your regularly scheduled shondas for the goyim…

Open thread.

 


What to Watch for in the US Senate Over the Next Several Days

by 1:26 pm. It has 331 Comments.

With the new allegations brought forth by Michael Avenatti, as well as the reporting that the President is taking over the public relations regarding his nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, including an announced 5 PM press conference/statement/availability, the real action will be within the Republican majority caucus in the Senate. Specifically all the attention needs to be on Senator McConnell.

The Senate majority leader is not particularly popular within his own caucus. He’s a top down, micromanager who tries to control everything. This includes the committees. The GOP committee chairs in the Senate are, in many ways, just figureheads. Right now every reporter is scrambling to get answers from Senator Grassley, who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, about what is going to happen. And while he or his office will eventually provide some, they aren’t really Grassley’s answers. They’re McConnell’s. Senator Grassley is just the face of the GOP majority on the committee, McConnell is really calling the shots.

Senator McConnell is almost the truest example of a natural fascist in American politics and public life today. His guiding principle that might makes right is the distilled essence of totalitarianism and was a hallmark of Mussollini’s fascism (national-syndicalism), as well as part of the bastardization of Nietzche’s philosophies adopted and used by the NAZIs. As I wrote back in June:

Senate Majority Leader McConnell isn’t a politician or like any politician who has ever served as Senate Majority or Minority Leader. Rather than view him as a politician, it is more appropriate to understand Senator McConnell as an insurgent, albeit a non-violent one. He recognizes no legitimacy but his own. When out of power he’ll do whatever is necessary using asymmetric, irregular, and/or unconventional means to achieve power. And once he achieves power he will do whatever he can to achieve his objectives to consolidate his gains as quickly as possible using any means necessary as he believes his actions are self justifying – that his achievement of power justifies his by any means necessary strategy. This is, by the way, the basic argument of the premier Italian fascist (national-syndicalist) theorist Sergio Panunzio, who delineated the fascist theories for the use of political violence and low intensity warfare in the 1920s. As a result, there is no law, rule, tradition, norm, ethic, promise, and/or deal he won’t violate or renege on. This also makes him an unreliable interlocutor and makes it impossible to negotiate with him in good faith as he doesn’t believe in good faith negotiations.

Senator McConnell doesn’t do anything in good faith. The last thing that Senator McConnell wants is to lose control of the Senate. Whether now because of the defections of a pair of his retiring members using it as leverage to achieve their own objectives or in the mid terms because enough voters want a check on the President to override the partisan Republican advantage in this senatorial election cycle. It is why he’s ground everything in the chamber other than handling nominations, specifically judicial nominations, to a halt. It is why he doesn’t want to do the legally required annual budgetary resolution so he can avoid having his members take tough votes before the midterms. And it is why he’s cancelled most of the August recess under the pretense that it is the only way he can move judicial nominees because of what he alleges is Democratic obstruction. Nominations that only exist because he prevented President Obama from seating almost any judicial nominees during his final two years in office. The Democratic minority has no tools to stop these nominations, regardless of what Senator McConnell says because Senator McConnell in conjunction with Senator Grassley has gotten rid of the blue slip rule and refuses to recognize Democratic senators holds on nominees. Senator McConnell’s cancellation of the August recess is really just a thinly veiled attempt to keep incumbent Democratic senators up for reelection off the campaign trail. Every Senate rule, tradition, norm, ethic, and even law (Congressional Budget Act) has been bent or stretched to breaking or just outright ignored by Senator McConnell in his quest to consolidate his power and achieve his revanchist and reactionary objectives. As an insurgent, albeit a non-violent one, Senator McConnell only understands and recognizes the application of leverage and force.

If you want to know how the Senate is going to respond to these recent allegations, or specifically how the Senate’s GOP majority is going to respond, watch Senator McConnell. He is the only Republican senator that matters.

Open thread.


The President Had Quite the Morning at the UN

by 1:27 pm. It has 209 Comments.

The President’s speech to the UN General Assembly this morning was basically a modified rally speech. He started off with his usual vigorous patting himself on the back, which was received well…

So that went well. But as the speech went on, it went someplace weird. And not just weird, but obscurely weird.

We already know that globalism is the code that Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon use to refer to not just the current global system of international trade, international relations, and international security agreements, but to Jews. It is intended to be understood, if I may, literally by the majority of people who aren’t anti-Semites or anti-Semitic curious and figuratively by the President’s supporters who are. But what is this Doctrine of Patriotism? The Doctrine of Patriotism was proposed by Charles Spurgeon a mid to late 19th Century Calvinist Baptist from London.

Specifically, Spurgeon wrote (emphasis mine):

Patriotism is an instinct which is found, I think, in every true Englishman. And most of the other nations of the earth can also boast of their patriots. Let it never be said that the Church of God has no feeling of patriotism for the Holy City, for the Heavenly Land and for her glorious King enthroned above. To us, Christian patriotism means love to the Church of God, for—

“There our best friends, our kindred dwell, There God our Savior reigns.”

Let us have loyalty, by all means, but, chiefly, loyalty to Christ! Let us have true patriotism, but, especially that patriotism which consists in love to “the land of the living” of which Christ is the one King and Ruler.

So here too we have the President using a phrase that is going to either just get a “hmm, that sounds a bit odd” or “what does he mean by that” from most listeners, including scholars of international relations and security and national security professionals and that is going to be heard and understood differently by a very specific group of the President’s base: white Evangelical Christians. Moreover, this concept dovetails with a lot of Putin’s attempts to use and leverage the Russian Orthodox Church to promote himself to white American Evangelicals, as well as a variety of American and European white supremacists, neo-NAZIs, neo-fascists, and neo-nationalists. The President’s use of the doctrine of patriotism, like his use of the term globalist, is meant to be taken figuratively by his base and fellow travelers, but literally by everyone else who doesn’t speak in this coded jargon.

Aside from the fact that realism can’t really be principled by its very nature, neither of these two things – principled realism and the doctrine of patriotism – are actually the Trump Doctrine. The Trump Doctrine, as we’ve discussed here extensively, is “I will be treated fairly or else and only I can ensure that America will be treated fairly or else and only I can ensure that the forgotten men and women of America will be treated fairly or else.”

I’m sure tomorrow’s UN Security Council meeting is going to go very smoothly…

Open thread.