I read your article, and. . . while I agree with you, there is a lot of stupid fibs, half truths, and lets face it, down right lies in there. . . and a lot, if not most of them, seem to be the result of a person that is aging, or gets incorrect information from folks under him.
Now, I am not making excuses for him, because I believe that the buck stops with the person in charge, and Trump has too much of an ego to ever admit when he makes a mistake, or gets fed poor information from incompetent inferiors, that is a big glaring weakness of his. . . OTH, he, unlike many of the leaders we have had, is not reluctant to sack lackeys and yes men, when they perform poorly. Our current administration will have folks making mistakes all over the damn place, and keeping their jobs through it all.
However, in my mind, the problem we have with our establishment, is the blatant bias cooked into the media system because of corporate corruption. The amount of lies and gas-lighting that has come out of the current administration in this first year, has blown my mind away, but you would be hard-pressed to find a similar article, or series by WaPo that kept a running tab on it.
It's shameless, it really is.
Actually. Turn it around.
Let me explain how things work and why. We have laws, Supreme Court decisions, Treaties, agreements, and understandings.
So let’s say the President wants to do something. Like whack a Terrorist leader. Ok. He puts it out there as a desired outcome. Well now the machinery of Government gets busy. Lawyers start to research the question to show the President is authorized and justified. The DOD starts to try and figure out where the guy is and who’s yard we will be invading. The State Department goes over treaties and agreements as well as unofficial understandings.
The State Department might even brief in friendly allied governments. Initially to get a read on how they feel about it. Later to get their official support.
All of this takes time. And Trump demonstrated that he detested it. To him lawyers were to fix the problem after. Not prevent the problem before. All of this was part of the process. And Trump did not play well with it.
Now his more ignorant supporters would cheer Trump and denounce the Deep State. But that deep state as it is denounced is nothing more than the processes that have evolved since the Nation rejected the Nixonian claim that if a President does it then it is automatically legal.
This process makes sure that any understandings we have worked out are not violated.
This takes time. Days. Weeks. Perhaps months depending on the action the President wants to take.
Trump never learned this. He fired people who told him he couldn’t do what he wanted.
An example of an understanding. Unofficial. But vital just the same. We do not assassinate KGB or whatever they are called today Agents. They don’t assassinate our CIA agents. The purpose of those agencies is to gather information. You can’t gather shit if you are dead.
If Trump wanted to kill a Spy the CIA would object. Loudly. Because that action would trigger a set of reprisals. Those reprisals would in turn trigger more actions. And we would learn even less about an opponent.
Trump hated these restrictions. He was dumb enough to believe that the other side would not dare retaliate.
No man can be an expert at everything. It is why the President has Advisors. Those advisors are experts in their fields.
Trump detested those experts. Now there is no rule that you have to go with their recommendations. But you have to listen to them. Trump wouldn’t. And he made lots of mistakes in handling things. Like COVID. Mistakes that were easily avoidable if he had learned while in office.