Michael Tomasky: We Are Truly Living Through the Amateur Hour Presidency: "From the moment when Donald Trump surprised even his own staff by announcing a summit with North Korea, it was obvious, I mean achingly obvious, that the president had no idea what he was doing...
...Needless to say, nearly everything that had happened since March 8 has been, at best, a misfire and, at worst, a disaster. Not the release of those three Americans. That was unambiguously a good thing. But everything else. Kim was elevated in this process to being not merely the equal of the President of the United States but, in some ways, his superior, the one who set the terms by which this process advanced (and then ended). One day, complete denuclearization meant one thing; another day it meant another thing. One day the summit was the most important thing in the world. The next day it was well, who knows, if it happens, great, if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. Trump even went out of his way to call Kim a “very honorable” man.
Can you imagine—yes, we have to go here—if President Clinton and her administration had engaged in this farce for 10 weeks? If she had bolted out of the Oval Office to make an announcement like the one Trump made with no forethought, to get a bad email story out of the cable news wheel?... He can’t be Manchuria’s candidate because he’s already the Kremlin’s. Well, the Kremlin would want a president who weakened America, discredited it, made it a laughing stock. Mission Accomplished.
#shouldread
