I’m still new at this

Roger Cohen, an op-ed columnist for the New York Times, describes the current situation in the State Department. High level positions aren’t being filled. No direction is coming from either Secretary Tillerson or the nasty guy. People are finding it untenable and are leaving. Cohen writes:

The reasons for this dismemberment are unclear. Is it punishment for Hillary Clinton’s department? Or an extreme iteration of the “deconstruction of the administrative state” sought by Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon? Does it reflect the priorities of Trump’s base or White House suspicion of the “deep state” or the president’s love of generals? All these factors appear to play a part. The upshot is a radical militarization of American foreign policy, and that’s dangerous.

I recommend the whole article.



The nasty guy claims he’s only been in politics for 2 years. His base has used that claim to argue to go easy on their guy. He’s inexperienced and still learning!

But the claim is not true. Sarah Kendzior, writing for The Correspondent, lays out the evidence.

A Newsweek cover story in 1987 – 30 years ago – talks about the nasty guy’s presidential ambitions. He was tutored by Roy Cohn, a ruthless lawyer who had advised Sen. Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s. The nasty guy visited Moscow in 1986. He worked his way out of bankruptcy in the second half of the 1990s with the help of Russians. When Putin came to power in 2000, the nasty guy already has ties with Putin’s associates. There is a lot more to the story.

All that means the nasty guy should not use “ignorance as an excuse for negligence and criminal behavior.” And “he was groomed by some of the US’s most notorious operatives.”