The worst and most extreme elements of American foreign policy since 2001 have been largely the result of a wing of the Republican movement called the Neoconservatives or “neocons.”
The older Neoconservatives gravitated from the Democratic party to the Republican party in the late 1970s, and under Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush were considered too extreme even by the militaristic Cold war warriors under Reagan. In fact, in these years, the Neoconservatives were known in senior US policy circles as the “crazies” (I kid you not), as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern points out in the video below.
And Ray McGovern was a policy insider: he was a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and by the 1980s was a chair of US National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the daily briefings for the President.
Even as late as 2002 Colin Powell had the same opinion of the Neocons.
By the 2000s, the “crazies” had taken control of US foreign policy. The 2003 war against Iraq, for example, was designed and driven by the Neoconservative wing of the administration of George W. Bush, and the Neoconservatives captured the support of Dick Cheney, and, through Cheney, George W. Bush himself. These Neoconservatives fabricated the WMD intelligence to justify the war through a unit set up in the Pentagon called the Office of Special Plans (OSP) (in operation from September 2002 to June 2003).
If you want a fine history of the Neoconservatives and their role in the Iraq war I recommend Stephen J. Sniegoski’s The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel (Norfolk, Va, 2008).
Although Obama retreated from some of the more extreme aspects of Neoconservative foreign policy, his actual policies have continued key aspects of it, e.g., a new Cold war with Russia in the Ukraine, and promotion of liberal democracy in the Middle East by endless war. The latter policy in particular has been disastrous, and has tended not to promote secular liberal Western-style democracy in the Middle East, but regressive and anti-Western medieval religious fundamentalism.
The promotion of secular liberal Western-style democracies in the Middle East might have been possible in the 1950s and 1960s, but the chances for this have long gone with the rise of extreme religious fundamentalism since the 1970s in that part of world. We can see how much things have changed since the 1960s in the video below. This is the president of Egypt speaking about the veil.
How times have changed in that part of the world!
In the 2000s, the neoconservatives pushed a militant, almost neo-Trotskyist, liberalism that held that establishment of secular democracy by war in the Middle East would solve the West’s problems in that region. This policy has been a spectacular failure, again and again, whether in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
But now Trump has rejected the Neoconservatives, even though he still talks like a hawk on some issues. Crucially, Trump refused to support the Iraq war back in the 2000s – and, even worse, openly sides with the view that the 2003 Iraq war was a total disaster and justified with lies, as we see in the videos below.
In the latter video, Trump is also right to point out we don’t really know whether George W. Bush himself knew the intelligence he received on WMD was a lie: probably he did not, because George W. was – let’s face it – a rather dumb man who believed whatever his advisers told him.
In fact, what Trump said in the videos above is moderate compared to the scathing indictment of Bush (and by implication the neocons) in 2007 in the video below.
The Neoconservatives are dead set on removing Bashar al-Assad in Syria and ramping up a new Cold war with Russia, but Trump seems opposed to this. Trump has also exposed the bizarre idea that there are “moderate” insurgents in Syria in any significant numbers or strength: this has been exposed again and again as a lie.
Now these comments, as well as various other things (e.g., Trump’s open ridicule of the warmonger McCain last year), have caused the Neoconservatives to foam at the mouth; they have been gathering in lynch mobs to lynch Trump since mid-2015, but Trump has simply crushed all opposition.
A typical neoconservative is Bill Kristol of the US journal the Weekly Standard. Bill Kristol hates Trump with a passion as we see in the videos below.
Apparently, Bill Kristol has threatened to vote for a third party presidential candidate if Trump wins the Republican nomination.
Finally, this point is crucial: the victory of Trump (even with his gung-ho, loud-mouth views on some aspects of foreign policy such as Iran or Ukraine) is a savage blow to Neoconservatism. Trump will return to a more traditional, realist US foreign policy. As bad as that might be, it is not as bad as the unhinged Neoconservative policy agenda that has been highly influential in the US government since 2001.
Further Reading
These are three books I highly recommend on American policy and the Nonconservatives:
Baker, Peter. 2013. Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House. Doubleday, New York.
Sniegoski, Stephen J. 2008. The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel. Enigma Editions, Norfolk, Va.
Wawro, Geoffrey. 2010. Quicksand: America’s Pursuit of Power in the Middle East. Penguin Press, New York.
LK, so ukraine and siria must be thrown to the wolves because this will appease putin, right? what about baltics? finland and sweden? poland? germany? where is the red line? is there a red line?
ReplyDeleteLK is sounding very Ron Paul isn't he?
DeleteAt this point I'm afraid to ask him if he thinks Lend-Lease was a bad idea ...
Ken B,
DeleteNot everything Ron Paul says is wrong, and one cannot use an ad hominem smear to refute me here.
Anonymous,
(1) How is the US or Trump throwing Syria "to the wolves" when Russia is slaughtering the lunatic, medieval religious nutcase rebels tearing that country apart, and allowing some kind of peace, and an end to the madness under a government that -- whatever its crimes -- will clearly be better than the anarchy now going on?
We know Assad is a bad man. But so is el-Sisi in Egypt, who is a brutal dictator who rules by military dictatorship. Yet the US and the UK and now support him against the loony Islamists in Egypt.
(2) the view that Russia is about to invade the Baltics, Finland, Sweden, Poland or Germany is crackpot f*cking insanity from some hysterical anti-Russian propagandist. Western Europe has NATO to defend it against any Russian aggression, and Trump has said he wants an end to the insane and pointless new Cold war being drummed up, not that he would appease Russian aggression in the Baltics. Trump -- if anything -- seems to be in the tradition of hard-headed US realists, and that still involves a lot of US intervention globally, incidentally -- just not endless insane neocon warmongering.
hate to break it to you but we ARE the wolves in syria. daesh and al nusra only made it as far as they did because of a constant flow of western weaponry
DeleteAnonymous@February 25, 2016 at 7:04 AM
Delete(1) Are you the same Anonymous as the one above? You need to give yourself a pen name/handle if you want further comments published here, because I'm not going to waste my time responding to multiple Anonymous commentators, it's too confusing.
(2) assuming your the same Anonymous: so, wait, you agree the loony rebels are the problem, but you claim that Russia's intervention is nothing but a bad thing?
And, actually, a lot of the weapons come from the Gulf state too.
LK, no we're not same anonymous.
DeleteOn point (2), I'm surprised you don't know (or pretend to not know) that the risk of war in east and north europe now is higher than in the 60s. We owe this to the "appeasement" ideology that you support. But don't worry, you're in good company, with Obama, Hillary, Kerry, Trump, Sarkozy, Le Pen (for front national, it's now official that they get money from Putin), Faradge and Corbyn, Orban, Salvini, and many others. And these politicians get money in their bank accounts (usually the "right-wing" ones) or indirect support (usually the "left-wing", like Corbyn and Obama).
On point (1), obviously there is no easy solution for Siria. But the fact all our main allies (Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia) in the region are fighting there should tell you something. But this is too long to explain and I'll cut here.
For the 2nd anonymous, you've forgot to turn on your brain. And the topic is complex and can't be dealt with in a few sentences. Anyway I'm willing to help after you make an attempt to understand what is happening there.
Oh, I see now: you're the same Anonymous who thinks the whole American libertarian movement is a product of Soviet subversion and that Rothbard was a dirty commie.
DeleteYou, Anonymous, are a crackpot. Do you expect Obama to start a war against Russia? Are you that much of a lunatic?
"(usually the "left-wing", like Corbyn and Obama)."
DeleteOh!!! hahahaha.. Obama is a commie agent, is he? Is the whole Democratic party secretly funded by Moscow?
And is Farage also a commie?
DeleteIn fact, is the whole Western world and its leadership all commies and secretly on Moscow's payroll??!!
Do tell, Mr Anonymous F*cking lunatic.
Not the whole party. Just some people here and there. I've never said Rothbard dirty commie. I don't expect Obama to start war with Russia.
DeleteJust to make it clear: what i do expect is that russian tanks will invade another european country, and people like you and obama will behave exactly the same. That is you'll deny it until it's too late to do anything about it. And then repeat this for the next country. As I've already said, where is the red line? Poland? Germany?
LK, you seem to go into an overdrive of silly accusations every time you read one of my posts. I hope it's because you're learning something new and you find it confusing... :)
DeleteP.S: In fact i also had a similar reaction the first time i read an "economist" article explaining the ugly reality. This was when putin invaded georgia around a decade ago.
"what i do expect is that russian tanks will invade another european country"
DeleteI see. Russia will occupy Germany, will it? Even when this will cause NATO and the US to go insane and probably use nuclear weapons? You are clearly living in Cold war fantasy world.
Tell me something else: are you an admirer of Stepan Bandera? Serious question.
Throwing Syria to the wolves seems a more apt description of the "Anyone but Assad" 'strategy' adopted by the Obama administration. I'm no fan of Putin, but he seems to have a coherent plan in Syria-namely, stabilize the Assad regime and give them territorial breathing room. Compare that to the US line, particularly concerning 'moderate rebels', and it seems clear that Putin's strategy isn't the one that throws Syria to the wolves.
DeleteThe fact of the matter is that Islamists are the most dominant, well organized ideology in the region, and toppling a government in a majority Muslim country will almost certainly lead to noxious Jihadists taking over. Assad may be a butcher, but so are countless US allies-and unlike the Jihadists, if Assad wins, he isn't going to murder every person with a different religious outlook like the rebels will.
" These Neoconservatives fabricated the WMD intelligence "
ReplyDeleteOh horseshit. There was certainly group think, but the administration did not lie the country into war. Read the bi-partisan report.
If Bush was lying so was Chirac as he said Iraq had WMDs even as he opposed the war.
And of course WMDs were found.
If you want to argue the war was a mistake, and the intelligence bad, go ahead. But this claim is false, and erodes your credibility.
Ken B,
DeleteHmmm, this seems to have touched off a nerve. To keep the discussion civil, let me say:
(1) I don’t claim that Bush deliberately lied his nation into war. On the contrary, I think he sincerely believed the fabricated intelligence that was being fed to him. To that extent, “Bush lied, people died” is a vulgar untruth. However, the evidence that the neocons engaged in the most shameless fabrication of intelligence is so overwhelming now, I’m really surprised you doubt it.
I recommend the book:
Sniegoski, Stephen J. 2008. The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel. Enigma Editions, Norfolk, Va.
(2) how do you explain the Downing Street Memo?:
“C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
http://downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em6pY3DfFbM
(3) there are numerous people who were working inside the administration in senior position who report today that even at the time people at high levels knew the war was being justified with fabricated intelligence.
E.g., the testimony of Karen Kwiatkowski:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/open-door-policy/
----
By the way, (2) and (3) are just a small sample of the evidence.
By the way, "C" in the Downing Street Memo is Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britain's MI6, who met with Tenet at length.
DeleteThis is what Sir Richard Dearlove himself said:
"But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
it's okay, most people can't get the story straight.
Deletebut yeah, they did lie
When you look at the whole passage it's clear he means closed minds and confirmation bias.
Delete"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now
seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism
and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience
with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little
discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
What do you think fixed means there? Serious question. Because I think it means fixed as in fixed idea, fixed in place, not fixed as in fiddled. And that assessment is exactly in line with the idea that they suffered from group think and confirmation bias.
And if we are being careful, those quotation marks surround Rycroft's words, not Dearlove's.
Good lord, Ken B, "fixed" is being used here in the natural way that a competent speaker of British English would use it as the context suggests: made up, created dishonestly, corrupted, fraudulently arranged.
DeleteIf one says a "fact" or "intelligence" is being being "fixed" it means manipulated, made up.
What were some of this fixed intelligence or "facts", you ask?
(1) the forged Niger uranium documents
(2) the idea that Saddam was responsible for 9/11.
(2) the lies pumped out by the Office of Special Plans under Abram Shulsky.
E.g, the testimony of Karen Kwiatkowski who was working in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate from 2002 to February 2003, about the intelligence produced by the Office of special plans:
"It wasn’t intelligence‚ – it was propaganda. They’d take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don’t belong together."
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/lie-factory?page=1
A full range of evidence here:
https://medium.com/dan-sanchez-blog/16-articles-that-expose-how-they-lied-us-into-war-in-iraq-bedf2e47c0bc#.c7yaiih01
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/10/27/the-stovepipe
No, that reading makes less sense than mine.
Delete1. But. If he were really saying "this is what they want so they are faking the intelligence" he would say "So". He said "but".
2. Fixed. In the OED my sense of fixed is the first meaning. Fixed as in a fixed gaze is the second meaning. Repair is the third meaning. The example of "fixing her hair" is listed above. Yours is listed 6th, and described as informal. Does the memo strike you as colloquial?
3. Around. Fixed around makes perfect sense in my reading. In yours there are now two oddities. "fixed to suit" or "fixed to match" would imply what you want, but "fixed around" matches my reading.
(1) this is a memo filled with terse, to-the-point language. This is a silly argument, I am afraid.
Delete(2) oh lord, Ken B, this is a summary of a meeting of the British war cabinet: a summary of people speaking in turn, a memorandum. It is obviously possible and entirely probable that Dearlove could have used a colloquial word like "fixed" in the sense of manipulated as he spoke and gave his assessment.
(3) again, this memo = a memorandum of a meeting taken by some secretary, so we don't know his actual words. His actual words may well have been more damming and more specific, Ken B.
Or less damning? You are the one arguing this is dispositive, don't you have the burden of proof?
DeleteI'd say you are exhibiting exactly the behaviour C noted: your reading is fixed around your desired outcome. You after all presented what you now call a summary of a summary as a verbatim quote, and attributed it the wrong person.
Yes, Ken B, I made an error in saying that the part I quoted was definitely verbatim.
DeleteHowever, even as a summary it is damning, certainly against the massive evidence of the lies and fabrications I have already listed in my other evidence, which you strangely don't seem to be interested in. The forged Niger uranium documents? The lie that Saddam was the evil genus behind 9/11?
We also know that the neocons bypassed official intelligence agencies. They set up their own Office of Special Plans to get the intelligence they needed. We have evidence from Karen Kwiatkowski.
Right, and my conclusion is not that you were diddling the evidence and faking quotes, but that you had fallen into the confirmation bias trap of seeing the evidence as stronger than it is, as different from what it is, and not assessing it as carefully as you might had you not already had a desired outcome in mind. Which is what I (and likely C) think Bush and his advisors were doing.
DeleteFurther evidence, Ken B.
ReplyDeleteWe now know that the cherry-picked fraudulent intel of the Office of Special Plans was totally contradicted by the assessments of ACTUAL regular government intelligence agencies, whether the CIA or military intelligence.
We know this from a declassified report by the Pentagon's acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble released in 2007:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0406/p99s01-duts.html
Further testimony of Karen Kwiatkowski who was working in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia directorate from 2002 to February 2003, about the intelligence produced by the Office of special plans:
ReplyDelete"From May 2002 until February 2003, I observed firsthand the formation of the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and watched the latter stages of the neoconservative capture of the policy-intelligence nexus in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. This seizure of the reins of U.S. Middle East policy was directly visible to many of us working in the Near East South Asia policy office, and yet there seemed to be little any of us could do about it.
I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.
I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president. "
http://www.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp/
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/01/iraq-war-wmds-donald-rumsfeld-new-report-213530#ixzz40pNX4o5G
ReplyDeleteDonald Rumsfeld and others knew there was no hard evidence for WMDs in Iraq. They chose not to share the information.
I don't see how it matters much whether the federal government deliberately lied about the program or were just incompetent. In fact I would feel better if the neo-cons were liars, so stupid were their claims.
But not being an optimist, I think both were true. That is, the neo-cons were liars in the sense that they were willing and committed to delivering false information to the public. But they were incompetent in the sense that many of them were crazy/dumb enough to believe that Saddam was connected to Al-Qaeda, that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program, and in general these people had little knowledge of either the Middle East or nuclear/chemical weapons(although this problem goes well beyond just neo-cons).
Independent confirmation of Thomas F. Gimble's report and Karen Kwiatkowski's evidence by the multiple government sources interviewed by Seymour Hersh:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence
Assessment by Ray McGovern, a CIA analyst from 1963 to 1990, and by the 1980s was a chair of US National Intelligence Estimates and prepared the daily briefings for the President, who agrees:
http://warisacrime.org/sham
Further evidence: the Office of Special Plans fake intel was fed directly to Cheney and to the White house bypassing official channels and allowing them to shut up and ignore actual regular government intelligence agencies, whether the CIA or military intelligence, who disagreed.
ReplyDeleteThe fake intel was then leaked to the press and public. On the later point:
http://nymag.com/nymag/features/9226/index2.html
Another source of massive fake intel: Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress (INC) which was seized on the neocons despite the fact that official intelligence assessments thought it was garbage:
ReplyDeletehttp://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/11/03/the-unfinished-business-of-ahmed-chalabi/
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-paid-1m-for-useless-intelligence-from-chalabi-89110.html
Chalabi certainly lied. He was not in that room with C, nor did anyone else there know he lied. That's why lies are effective : people believe them.
ReplyDeleteNo, Ken B, this argument doesn't work: why?
DeleteLet me run through the steps:
(1) the CIA and US military intelligence did **not** -- repeat not -- fall for these lies and were vehemently opposing the lies.
(2) the neocons couldn't the intel they wanted so they turned to a special office to find the intelligence
(3) conveniently the intel was found from cherry picked data and lies from Chalabi's group.
(4) however, CIA and US military intelligence didn't fall for the B.S. of Chalabi and were warning so. Were the neocons really so stupid and incompetent that they ignored all official intel and just fell for Chalabi?
(5) the neocons bypassed the official intel agencies and fed there fake intel direct to Cheney and Bush
(6) Sir Richard Dearlove meets Tenet at the CIA, and Tenet is well aware of (1) to (5) above.
Dearlove later reports:
“C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”
http://downingstreetmemo.com/memos.html
That is, they faked the evidence.
I am sorry Ken B, the case is rock solid.
Jeez LK.
ReplyDeleteHere is your contention.
"the Neoconservative wing of the administration of George W. Bush, and the Neoconservatives captured the support of Dick Cheney, and, through Cheney, George W. Bush himself. These Neoconservatives fabricated the WMD intelligence "
So, a smallish, identifiable group "fabricated the WMD intelligence".
But this Kwiatkowski quote does not even address that issue. Let's look.
"I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and
through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president. "
Let's start with "suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis". That sounds exactly like cherry picking and confirmation bias. And it's of the anlysis (her word) not the data.
Does she say she saw someone, from your list of the accused, changed a "0 sightings" to "512 sightings" in some report?
No. She is describing a disagreement about interpretation and meaning -- that's why she calls it "distortion'. Distortion is a matter of judgment.
I am not arguing that it wasn't diostorted; I am pointing out that people with closed minds and fixed ideas do that sort of thing unawares.
So she is describing people with their head up their asses insisting and misunderstanding and and blind to disconfirming evidence distorting. But that's not fabricating.
And to beat a dead horse one more time, it is exactly what you did with the C quote. Were you fabricating when you posted "what were in fact falsehoods."
And Kwiatkowski doesn't indicate any of your small coterie who captured Bush either.
Nor is your other stuff better. You wrote
"Further evidence: the Office of Special Plans fake intel was fed directly to Cheney and to the White house bypassing official channels and allowing them to shut up and ignore actual regular government intelligence agencies, whether the CIA or military intelligence, who disagreed. "
That suggests to me that "Cheney and to the White house" are VICTIMS of this alleged falsification, and it really sounds like them fixing on anything that confirmed their view and slighting the rest.
And Chalabi? He was a neo-conservative in "the administration of George W. Bush"? What was his title?
Finally I want to note the definite article. "the WMD evidence". Your statement goes way beyond "some" evidence fabricated; it implies all of the intelligence was fabricated, which is absurd.
I assume this is simply a bit of careless wording, but I will note once again it's a distortion and in fact a falsehood.
Gee, have we seen that before?
Stop making a fool of yourself.
DeleteEssentially you are saying that Chalabi and Curveball were able to fool the whole US government and intelligence agencies.
>>And of course WMDs were found.
Please tell us more.
No, he's saying that their misinformation was more credible to the Administration than intelligence agencies who had little concrete knowledge of what was going on in Iraq.
DeleteBanana it seems is too smug and too lazy to google, too oblivious to have paid attention in the first place.
Deletehttp://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2014/10/16/new-york-times-reports-wmd-found-in-iraq
And Qwerty is right of course. Banana's misstatement is at a Murhyesque level.
Habe you read the original report in the nyt? They found stuff from pre-1991. Rusty shells, abandoned ammunition buried under sand. How can this pose a threat to the USA?
DeleteI wonder why the neocons didn't show up in the media celebrating that they were right about the WMD.
>>their misinformation was more credible to the Administration than intelligence agencies who had little concrete knowledge of what was going on in Iraq.
= Stupid people got fooled.
So the administration was either full of morons. Or they just gave a fuck as long as they could go to war.
What's more likely? Your choice.
So, you agree you were wrong?
DeleteNowhere did I say these finds, and there were others, vindicated Bush. Try to actually understand the argument made.
Hilarious you mock LK for spelling and ask about what I 'habe' read. Revealing of character methinks.
OOPS. My error. That was pithom the spelling maven. Apologies to banana.
DeleteThe important thing to remember about Trump is that he is not talking to you. His word level is about 4th grade and his word structure is designed to have a particular persuasive effect.
ReplyDeleteWhat you'll find is that *intellectual* are the only people that are calling him Racist, etc. But if you actually look at the words he said *and* read them as though you are somebody who doesn't do complicated, then he's not actually being racist at all. He's just using simple language.
It's the pundits that are making stuff up about him. And he doesn't bother countering it. Because he knows that the pundits don't know how to talk to his target audience as well as he does.
He's a hustler. And that means he knows how to use language to sell ideas.
Indeed.
DeleteI dislike Trump but I cheer his assault on PC and the entrenched nomenklatura. What's remarkable is how easily he blows through them. The key is he never apologizes or grovels or grants the PC critic what he really wants, which is a gesture acknowleding his (the critic's) moral superiority.
I have done this myself to enrage NDPers in Canada and Bob Murphy and his ilk. (Murphy gets angry when you relentlessly refuse to grant that he has some sort of moral high ground even if you think his ideas impractical. I think them immoral.) But Trump is way better at it than I am!