Containment Won’t Solve the Problems Trump Poses

David Frum, writing for The Atlantic:

Among other insights, Corker’s Sunday interview forces Americans to confront some tough questions: By what methods is the president being contained? Is he, for example, being denied sensitive information by agencies that remember how he blurted a closely guarded secret to the Russian foreign minister and the location of U.S. nuclear submarines to the president of the Philippines? Are allies and potential adversaries being signaled that presidential statements do not actually represent the policy of the United States government? That was how National-Security Adviser H.R. McMaster dealt with Trump’s refusal to read aloud the endorsement of NATO’s Article 5 in the speech written for Trump to deliver at NATO headquarters in May. “He did not make a decision not to say it.”

To what extent does the president remain in the military chain of command?

In other words: what are the long-term effects of normalizing the idea that the military and intelligence agencies can ignore the president?

★ Monday, 9 October 2017