We USers are now officially in a trade war with our border neighbors

Brightdreamer said:

No, the frightening - outright straight-from-a-dystopian-nightmare terrifying - part is that nobody is stopping his misinformed delusions from dictating policy... how he's essentially being encouraged to be more outrageous and more delusional because it sells well to the base, future and the rest of the world be damned.

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Brightdreamer said:

No, the frightening - outright straight-from-a-dystopian-nightmare terrifying - part is that nobody is stopping his misinformed delusions from dictating policy... how he's essentially being encouraged to be more outrageous and more delusional because it sells well to the base, future and the rest of the world be damned.

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Jan74 said:

He(Trump)drives me batshitcrazy with his outinleftfield beliefs which are never based in fact. First the tariff on steel is because of national security and now it's because of dairy....good grief make up your mind. As for dairy, the USA over production of dairy isn't Canada's problem(we have a supply and demand system)and we allow 10% of dairy products, tariff free I might add, into our country and the USA only allows us 3%. He's just so full on nonsense and bullshit. It's frightening how misinformed and warped he is.

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Brightdreamer said:

No, the frightening - outright straight-from-a-dystopian-nightmare terrifying - part is that nobody is stopping his misinformed delusions from dictating policy... how he's essentially being encouraged to be more outrageous and more delusional because it sells well to the base, future and the rest of the world be damned.

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Many of Donald Trump’s critics find it difficult to ascribe to a president they consider to be both subliterate and historically insensate a foreign-policy doctrine that approaches coherence. A Trump Doctrine would require evidence of Trump Thought, and proof of such thinking, the argument goes, is scant. This view is informed in part by feelings of condescension, but it is not meritless. Barack Obama, whose foreign-policy doctrine I studied in depth, was cerebral to a fault; the man who succeeded him is perhaps the most glandular president in American history. Unlike Obama, Trump possesses no ability to explain anything resembling a foreign-policy philosophy. But this does not mean that he is without ideas.

Over the past couple of months, I’ve asked a number of people close to the president to provide me with short descriptions of what might constitute the Trump Doctrine. I’ve been trying, as part of a larger project, to understand the revolutionary nature of Trump’s approach to world affairs. This task became even more interesting over the weekend, when Trump made his most ambitious move yet to dismantle the U.S.-led Western alliance; it becomes more interesting still as Trump launches, without preparation or baseline knowledge, a complicated nuclear negotiation with a fanatical and bizarre regime that quite possibly has his number.

Trumpian chaos is, in fact, undergirded by a comprehensible worldview, a number of experts have insisted. The Brookings Institution scholar (and frequent Atlantic contributor) Thomas Wright argued in a January 2016 essay that Trump’s views are both discernible and explicable. Wright, who published his analysis at a time when most everyone in the foreign-policy establishment considered Trump’s candidacy to be a farce, wrote that Trump loathes the liberal international order and would work against it as president; he wrote that Trump also dislikes America’s military alliances, and would work against them; he argued that Trump believes in his bones that the global economy is unfair to the U.S.; and, finally, he wrote that Trump has an innate sympathy for “authoritarian strongmen.”

The third-best encapsulation of the Trump Doctrine, as outlined by a senior administration official over lunch a few weeks ago, is this: “No Friends, No Enemies.” This official explained that he was not describing a variant of the realpolitik notion that the U.S. has only shifting alliances, not permanent friends. Trump, this official said, doesn’t believe that the U.S. should be part of any alliance at all. “We have to explain to him that countries that have worked with us together in the past expect a level of loyalty from us, but he doesn’t believe that this should factor into the equation,” the official said.


The second-best self-description of the Trump Doctrine I heard was this, from a senior national-security official: “Permanent destabilization creates American advantage.” The official who described this to me said Trump believes that keeping allies and adversaries alike perpetually off-balance necessarily benefits the United States, which is still the most powerful country on Earth. When I noted that America’s adversaries seem far less destabilized by Trump than do America’s allies, this official argued for strategic patience. “They’ll see over time that it doesn’t pay to argue with us.”


The best distillation of the Trump Doctrine I heard, though, came from a senior White House official with direct access to the president and his thinking. I was talking to this person several weeks ago, and I said, by way of introduction, that I thought it might perhaps be too early to discern a definitive Trump Doctrine.


“No,” the official said. “There’s definitely a Trump Doctrine.”


“What is it?” I asked. Here is the answer I received:


“The Trump Doctrine is ‘We’re America, Bitch.’ That’s the Trump Doctrine.”


It struck me almost immediately that this was the most acute, and attitudinally honest, description of the manner in which members of Trump’s team, and Trump himself, understand their role in the world.


I asked this official to explain the idea. “Obama apologized to everyone for everything. He felt bad about everything.” President Trump, this official said, “doesn’t feel like he has to apologize for anything America does.” I later asked another senior official, one who rendered the doctrine not as “We’re America, Bitch” but as “We’re America, Bitches,” whether he was aware of the 2004 movie Team America: World Police, whose theme song was “America, Fuck Yeah!”

“Of course,” he said, laughing. “The president believes that we’re America, and people can take it or leave it.”

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nighttimer said:

The Trump Doctrine is {...}

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Symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder
The definition of NPD states that it comprises of a persistent manner of grandiosity, a continuous desire for admiration, along with a lack of empathy. It starts by early adulthood and occurs in a range of situations, as signified by the existence of any 5 of the next 9 standards (American Psychiatric Association, 2013):

• A grandiose logic of self-importance
• A fixation with fantasies of infinite success, control, brilliance, beauty, or idyllic love
• A credence that he or she is extraordinary and exceptional and can only be understood by, or should connect with, other extraordinary or important people or institutions
• A desire for unwarranted admiration
• A sense of entitlement
• Interpersonally oppressive behavior
• No form of empathy
• Resentment of others or a conviction that others are resentful of him or her
• A display of egotistical and conceited behaviors or attitudes

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nighttimer said:

Beg to differ. There is a method to Our Supreme Leader's madness. It's simple. It's direct. It's as Trump as Trump gets.

The Trump Doctrine is, "We're America, Bitch."



America is led by a moron who goes out of his way to be boorish, rude, vulgar and nasty to our allies and praise, flatter, applaud and suck face with tyrants, autocratic strongmen, dictators, and psychopaths. Welcome to the New Abnormal.

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cbenoi1 said:

There is no Trump doctrine, lower case 'd'.

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Tazlima said:

While I agree with the last paragraph here, I can't agree that Trump's doctrine is "We're America, Bitches," simply because from everything I've seen of the man, he never thinks in terms of "We." That "we" is wishful thinking on the part of the speakers, who are still clinging to the illusion that Trump is loyal to anybody or anything but himself, and projecting their own sense of civic pride onto an individual who, going simply by his title, reasonably SHOULD be expected to share in it, at least to some minimal degree. An unpatriotic president seems as bizarre, as almost-unthinkable, as an athiest pope.

As far as I can determine, his entire existence focuses around "I, me, mine." He views this country the same way he views his real estate, his own personal property to profit off of as he sees fit. He takes criticism of the country as a personal slight.

In light of that, I'd say his leadership style, if such a crude, childish approach to world affairs can be called a "style," is more accurately described as: "I'm America, bitch."

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blacbird said:

Incorrect. The Trump Doctrine is:

"I'M America, Bitch."

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“People criticize [Trump] for being opposed to everything Obama did, but we’re justified in canceling out his policies,” one friend of Trump’s told me. This friend described the Trump Doctrine in the simplest way possible. “There’s the Obama Doctrine, and the ‘Fuck Obama’ Doctrine,” he said. “We’re the ‘Fuck Obama’ Doctrine.”

blacbird said:

But, he is, de facto, the President of the United States. And he has just inadvertently, via vocal diarrhea, revealed one of his secret goals. This quote, just a day or so ago, about President Xi of China:

“They just, essentially president for life, that’s pretty good.”

We are all rightfully concerned about the First Amendment to the Constitution being under attack from Trumpians. We also need to worry about the 22nd.

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Trump says he wants American people to treat him like North Koreans treat totalitarian dictator Kim Jong Un.

TRUMP: "Hey, he's the head of a country, and he's the strong head -- he speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same."

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frimble3 said:

I don't think Trump wants to be a 'strong head' - he just wants to have his own way, and have people bow and scrape in his presence. This is why he freaked out over the 'take a knee' protest: when people disrespect the flag, anthem and Pledge of Allegiance, they're disrespecting him.
He's probably got people, really great, top people, working on a special salute that people can use to show their love and respect.

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