Political Crossfire Forums

@kane

If we don't vociferously denounce and reject this shit, we are only serving to normalize it. Our silence is too easily taken as indifference or agreement.

It's just too easy to step back and go, "Yeah, trump's a dipshit, so what else is new?" We need to keep energetically reviling it.

The damage is quite a bit more than that.

It is a near certainty that US and foreign intelligence agencies are working to mitigate the risks associated with Trump in office. He is the ultimate classification authority, and everything truly important comes across his desk.

Now, from the sounds of it, his caretakers mostly let the bureaucracy around him make most of the decisions, as he doesn't care for detail. But he nonetheless is privy to information at the highest level and would absorb some of it.

It isn't just the Russia thing. That is a part of it. Agencies would also be concerned about his more general ability to maintain discretion. This is a man who is reckless at every turn, and I doubt very much he is careful about what he says. His administration is already leaking like a sieve. I wouldn't be surprised if he has already told his friends all sorts of things that anyone of intelligence could pick out meaning from.

This is a problem, but what really concerns me is what this means to the Presidency and the bureaucracy that surrounds it. The next President will surely replace everyone and everything, but now there is an environment where it is understood if certain things are just not brought up to the boss.

I think everything will be fine. With Trump gone and somebody comparatively sane back at the helm, the trust will slowly return. But while he is in office, other actors are repositioning themselves, and taking advantage of the clear lack of leadership by the President. Things will get better. But it isn't as simple as passing him off as a joke to other leaders. There are long-term abilities being damaged here.

it also takes very little time to f**k up foreign policy compared to the time it takes to fix it.