Donald Trump just completely blew it
Donald J. Trump, IMPOTUS the Third, gave a press conference on Wednesday and looked and sounded just plain old nuts, and he couldn’t cover it up with Adderall no matter how hard he might have tried. As Palmer Report noted, the press seemed to have avoided the topic, which was the JCPOA deal with Iran. Trump appeared to be the “Just Crazy President Of America.”
As a reminder, the JCPOA was reached in 2015 and was signed on by China, France, Russia, United Kingdom, and the United States (the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council), as well as Germany. In 2017, Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement. The rest of the signatories remained on it.
In an odd twist on the deal, Trump asked the five other signatories to withdraw from the JCPOA and, ala the NAFTA deal or anything else IMPOTUS leaves, then sign on to a new deal – which sounds like the version of The Who lyrics, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Trump stated that “the time has come” for other nations: “to break away from the remnants of the Iran deal, or JCPOA, and we must all work together toward making a deal with Iran that makes the world a safer and more peaceful place.”
The challenge with all of this is that the JCPOA was working and Iran was following it. Trump grossly misstated fact after fact and then gave us that whopper. In the meantime, Senator Mike Lee, a Trump follower generally, said the briefing was the worst he has heard on security. Lindsey “Kompromat” Graham immediately pulled his head out of the dark cave that is #Trumpistan and licked the IMPOTUS’ boots, as per the norm. We had better wake up as the republic is heading off the cliff with a dangerous president and a feckless GOP driving it.
Daniel is a lawyer writing and teaching about SCOTUS, and is the author of the book “The Chief Justices” about the SCOTUS as seen through the center seat.