WASON: US leaders should not stand with dictators
Any remnants of a political culture incentivized toward bipartisan behavior had perished long before President Donald J. Trump took office in 2016, so it is not quite fair to place the blame squarely on his shoulders for the particularly divisive environment that currently exists. In July 2014, under the previous administration of former President Barack Obama, a whopping 68 percent of Republicans favored his removal from office for what they saw as executive overreach.
In 2008, articles of impeachment were actually put forth in the House of Representatives by Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) in response to former President George W. Bush’s actions in the lead-up to and during the Iraq War. While Trump may not be the sole root cause of the environment we find ourselves in, he has certainly played his part in further cementing the status quo.
As has been made abundantly clear over the course of the past three years, there is very little Trump can do to cause his base to defect. A Gallup poll conducted last month revealed an 89-percent majority of Republicans approved of Trump’s performance on the job despite the mounting investigations faced by both himself and his campaign. This should help put into context just how irresponsible Trump must behave in order to face any sort of rebuke from the Republican Party.
One of these remarkably irresponsible moments came this past July at the Helsinki summit, when the president of the United States stood beside Vladimir Putin and very clearly told the world that he had taken the Russian despot’s word over that of the CIA, FBI and Office of the Director of National Intelligence — all of whom had concluded “with high confidence” that Russia had in fact meddled in the 2016 presidential election.
Even the president’s most ardent supporters, then House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), Senator Bob Sasse (R-Neb.) and perhaps his most strategically important ally Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), had all come out in clear dissent of Trump’s embarrassing, borderline-treasonous performance on the world stage.
Any of Trump’s supporters in Congress hoping to avoid again being made to harmonize with the Democratic chorus of criticism toward the president had those wishes dashed this past Thursday with his response to a reporter’s question on Otto Warmbier. Warmbier was a 21-year-old college student who, while on a tour in North Korea, was arrested and accused of stealing a propaganda poster from his hotel. The next time Warmbier would return to his parents in the United States, he would be in a vegetative state.
Warmbier died six days after his return as a result of severe brain damage. Since his return in June 2017, there have been more questions than answers regarding what exactly had happened to him, and Trump does not seem all that eager to undo that reality.
So again, standing next to North Korean Dictator Kim Jong-un in Hanoi as part of ongoing peace talks, the president of the United States proclaimed before the global community that he had decided to side with a tyrant instead of common sense. But this time, he betrayed more than the work of his own intelligence agencies. This time he betrayed an American family that had been victimized at the hands of the man he was now standing next to, ever so eager to take every opportunity to shake hands and smile for the cameras.
Trump had the audacity to stand before the entire world and concede in the same breath that while “some really bad things happened to Otto,” he had spoken to Kim and decided to “take him at his word” in regard to his denial to knowing directly of Warmbier’s case.
It does not take someone with an agenda against the president to see the similarities in his cowering behavior during face-to-face meetings with two of our biggest adversaries. By accepting the denials of Putin and Kim when he had every reason not to do so, Trump has welcomed this scrutiny upon himself. He talks a lot of big talk against his political opponents in the United States but when standing next to autocrats in charge of countries with opposing national interests to those of our own, he cannot even muster up the courage to confront them in the slightest manner.
Besides, if Trump is good at anything, it is dodging questions from reporters. Last week besides Kim, he used his skills to protect his new friend, telling the international press that Kim told him that “he felt very badly” about the whole situation. Hey, Trump, he was right next to you. Could he not say so himself? If he was as apologetic as you say, why is there no public record of him even remotely expressing such feelings?
Trump is the one that decided to give Kim access to the world stage he has so desperately vied to stand before but he nevertheless refuses to even ask Kim to publicly repent for killing an American college student in return. If Trump cannot get Kim to publicly repent for the murder of an American college student, how will he get him to denuclearize his military?
He claims that he has had to concede nothing on behalf of the United States in these peace talks but it is increasingly and certainly starting to look like his dignity as commander in chief is on the negotiating table. So much for the art of the deal.
Amar Wason is a School of Arts and Sciences junior majoring in political science. His column, “Disputed Territory,” runs on alternate Tuesdays.
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