GRABBING SMOKE

During the  2016 presidential campaign, one of the problems that the media had in covering candidate Donald Trump was that there were so many potential issues in his past that could reveal him as being a poor candidate for president: from the fact that he and his father were found guilty by the federal government of discriminating against black applicants at one of their properties back in the 1970's, to his multiple bankruptcies, to the blatant chicanery of Trump University, there was too much to cover properly, and emphasizing just one of them was difficult.  This stood in stark contrast to candidate Hillary Clinton, who had to field numerous questions about her emails time and time again; the effect of this was that to the casual news media consumer, the email scandal was far worse than anything in Trump's past because of the media's emphasis on it.  Add to that Trump's  image as a super successful billionaire that he had carefully cultivated over his years as a reality TV show figure, and its sadly easy to see why Trump was able to skate over his many past transgressions, without even the release of the infamous Access Hollywood tape stopping him.
Now that he's president, the media is having the same problem of overload; here are some recent examples of Trump's potential scandals:

- He recently tweeted that he wanted to help out Chinese telecom company ZTE, saying that were “Too many jobs in China lost."  This came after a Trump backed company was pledged with a five hundred million dollar loan from the Chinese government, which Paul Krugman in the New York Times said may be an outright bribe.

- He also reportedly pushed the postmaster general, Megan Brennan, to double the rates that the Postal Service charges the online company Amazon for shipping.  It appears that the main reason he's doing this is because Amazon owner Jeff Bezos also owns The Washington Post, a newspaper that has the temerity to print the truth about him.  In other words, since he can't directly attack freedom of the press, he will work around it to punish anyone who prints anything negative about him.

-At the gathering in Israel to celebrate the relocation of the American Embassy to Jerusalem, the opening prayer was given by Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch pastor,  who once said that "Islam, Judaism,  and Hinduism” lead people “to an eternity of separation from God in Hell.” The closing benediction was given by John Hagee, who once said that Hitler was sent by God to drive the Jews to their ancestral homeland.

Given that none of these scandals have risen to the level of coverage that the Russia investigation and the Stormy Daniels affair have, it is highly likely that once again Trump has  gotten away with corrupt and possibly criminal behavior that no other president has come close to getting away with. (It's depressing to consider just how much of a media storm it would have caused if Barack Obama had tweeted about protecting jobs in China while president!) Sadly, Trump has never had to pay for all the corruption and lies he was involved in before he became president, and he may never as president.  I still often feel that this country may not survive this presidency intact.

THE PATH TO WAR

Well, that was quick.  John Bolton has been Donald Trump's national security advisor for less than a month, and already his odious influence has been seen.  After threatening it for months, last Tuesday president Trump officially pulled America out of the nuclear arms deal  with Iran.  This is despite the fact that Iran has complied with the tenants of the treaty, and that the American allies that were also part of the treaty like the UK and France practically begged him not to do it.   Trump's stated problems with the deal was that Iran was still promoting terrorist groups in other parts of the world, and that the deal would end in ten years.  A call for renegotiating the plan to deal with these issues might have been a reasonable thing, but, because Trump doesn't want to admit that parts of the plan were working, he childishly killed it entirely.
The Iran deal now winds up in the waste basket along with the other deals that Trump has destroyed since taking office: the Paris climate change accord, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. All three of them were treaties signed after years of careful negotiations with foreign leaders that he tore to shreds with little thought beyond the fact they were all forged by Barack Obama, and therefore must be bad.  (Somewhat absurdly, he has openly considered jumping back into the TPP agreement almost a year after leaving it, despite the fact that it has been completely renegotiated).  In typical fashion, his abandonment of each was not followed by any real alternate proposal beyond vague assurances that he wanted a "better deal".
While I disagree with his destroying all three deals, this latest move may very well prove to be the worst.  The collapse of the deal means that onerous sanctions against Iran have been put back in place, and as the New York Times pointed out yesterday "For the working class and for low-income people, new sanctions and renewed isolation will mean fewer jobs, less security and more poverty", which may also result in less time for the people of Iran to protest against their oppressive government, a government, the Times also noted, that will not really be effected by these sanctions.  And what reason does Iran have for returning to negotiations now, given that Trump has shown that any agreement reached by one president can just be thrown out by the next one?
The sad fact of the matter is that Bolton really wants Iran to start rebuilding its weapons  program, because it would  be the best pretext for attacking the country by Israel and America.  Bolton has publicly stated that he supports "regime change" in Iran, and we all know what that means.  As a candidate, Trump  ran as an isolationist, who blasted the 2004 Iraq invasion, but now he's listening to advice from Bolton, one of the few political figures in this country who thinks that that invasion was a smashing success.  One he wants to repeat  in Iran.  And when you add to that the fact that Trump often seems to base his views on any given subject on whomever he just last spoke to, and we have a recipe for disaster.