June 15 was a special day for Trump – good old television unexpectedly displaced his tweets. Two televised events gave him ample room to rant about fake news and push for his favorite justification for trade wars: resentment at “unfair treatment” of America by the rest of the world, allies included.
One was a surprise half-hour long interview with Fox & Friends. A short video released by The Washington Post focuses on the main points he made:
The other was an 18 minute Q&A session with reporters outside the White House:
Significantly, Trump did not discuss trade at any point in either televised sessions, although on that same day he had just slapped steep (25%) new tariffs covering $50 billion in trade with China. Watching Trump make all his pet points, one is struck by the fact that he covered the same old topics. Those he’s been constantly and obsessively tweeting about.
First, Hillary Clinton and the possibility that his winning the presidency was never a clear-cut victory. He pretended to misunderstand the just released report from the FBI Inspector General – enabling him to claim the report “exonerates” him. The report does nothing of the sort, it reviews the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. It finds some faults with the then FBI Director James B. Comey for not adhering closely to protocol, along with others in his team, notably Peter Strzok and Lisa Page who were having an affair and exchanged over-the-top bragging emails.
Yet Trump calls the report a “horror show”, not because of what’s in it, he says, but because of the conclusion that there was no political bias in the FBI investigation. Trump cannot accept that. For him, there was “total bias”; the FBI was a “den of thieves”; Comey is a “criminal”; the top FBI management is “scum”; if you “polled the FBI, the real FBI”, you’d find they all “love” him.
In short, there never was any collusion between his campaign and Russia. We’ve all heard that before, over and over.
Second point, on national security. America’s military, built up to the tune of $700 billion a year, will be bigger than ever. The wall is needed, borders must be secured, a “compromise immigration bill” cannot be supported. The separation of immigrant children from their parents at the border is regrettable but it’s the Dem’s fault.
Third point, the whole world and America’s closest allies especially, Europe, Japan and Canada, took “horrible”, “unfair” advantage of America both on trade and military aid. The only ally that got a nod of approval was Giuseppe Conte, the new Prime Minister of Italy, because they shared a common anti-immigration stand. This conveniently overlooks the massive differences in their stand: Italy, in spite of the recent spat with France over immigration – now resolved – is still receiving immigrants and does not separate children from parents.
For Trump, all will change now. We need to realize, he tells us, that President Obama “lost” Crimea, he “gave it away”. And that happened because Putin “had no respect for Obama”. With him at the helm, disrespect like that can never happen again. He is making friends with the right people, he can call up North Korea dictator Kim Jong-un anytime. And Putin, he feels, should be back in the G7.
What next: A Series of Trade Wars?
The mass of falsehoods was bewildering. Some American journalists wondered whether the Republican party would finally react, for example, Chuck Todd, NBC News political director tweeted:
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Claude Forthomme's Blog about Social Issues and Books 