Great job by Rep. Gerry Connolly at the J Street forum earlier today (see video below), demolishing Trump’s/Bannon’s evisceration of decades of U.S. foreign policy. According to Rep. Connolly, there’s an “intellectual framework” to what Trump’s doing, “and it comes from Steve Bannon and Breitbart…[namely that] the traditional instrumentalities we built after WWII that…won the Cold War and promoted democracy are suspect and need to be abandoned.” Connolly added, correctly, that Trump is seriously damaging the Foreign Service and the State Department; is harming U.S. influence around the world; is “erratic” and definitely not a “stable leader”; is “making conflict more inevitable” and “retreating from our position in the world.” In Connolly’s view, none of this is by accident: “It is deeply troubling…[and] we’re making conflict more inevitable and we are retreating from our position in the world, which we must carry…I don’t think you can overstate what this represents. It isn’t just that they don’t like a particular bureaucratic department of government – it’s far more sinister; it’s deliberate, it’s by design, and it’s based on a very dystopian view of the world and our role in it, best articulated by Steve Bannon, and his ghost, believe me, continues to haunt the White House.”
P.S. On Congress’ role, Rep. Connolly said that Congressional Republicans “have essentially gone AWOL; they see and hear and speak no evil when it comes to Donald Trump and therefore you can’t count on them.” Connolly added that “the only solution is the Democrats have to win in November and take back the House of Representatives.”
P.P.S. On the question of whether our president is a “compromised Manchurian candidate” and how likely that is on a scale of 1 to 5, Rep. Connolly said, “I guess I would say we’re approaching a 5…the behavior of Trump…is not that of an innocent man…Mr. Steele is actually a very respected intelligence operative…he’s not some fly-by-night crazy, and that dossier is to be taken seriously…And then there’s the money part, and we know that Russian oligarchs financed parts of the Trump enterprise…”
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