Cagle World

This week, the first consequences of President Trump’s choice to violate the P5+1’s nuclear agreement with Iran have emerged. As his administration re-imposed its initial round of sanctions, the president was defiant as ever – insisting that he was “asking for world peace, nothing less!”

Our allies and partners in the European Union and beyond, however, don’t see it that way. Sticking with the deal’s terms, it is now up to them to maintain the limited economic relief that Iran is receiving in exchange for hard, verifiable limits on and intrusive inspections of its nuclear program. The United States, meanwhile, has been left hollering on the sidelines.

It’s just another of many ways that President Trump’s “America First” strategy more often than not translates to “America Alone.”

From attacking our allies to withdrawing from international agreements and starting trade wars to slashing contributions to global organizations, President Trump is indulging his inclination to lead based only on his own instincts – leaving us increasingly isolated on the world stage. It smacks of the ‘America going it alone’ ethos of the George W. Bush Administration, but with even more malice and ignorance baked into the decision-making process.

The comparison to President Bush’s bravado and foolhardiness, cranked up to a Trumpian 11, is more pressing than ever as tensions continue to boil with Iran. The president has surrounded himself with Iran hawks like National Security Advisor John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who are no doubt throwing fuel on the fire. And as more messaging comes out of Washington that sounds like a policy of ‘regime change,’ things will likely only get worse in any number of ways.

The first risk is that this intensified souring of relations could lead to an accident, misunderstanding, or small issue escalating into a wider conflict with Iran. Our president is not known for his even temperament any more than the regime in Tehran is for their restraint; it’s a dangerous combination that could lead to fast escalation. Miscalculation has been a risk factor in armed conflict throughout history, and we are not exempt in the 21st century – especially with heads of state who threaten one another over Twitter.

The second risk is that the deal, without U.S. buy-in, could ultimately collapse – and with it would go the limits constraining and inspectors monitoring Iran’s nuclear program. The United States would almost certainly be blamed for this failure, seeing as it was our president who first broke the deal’s terms. Even more alarmingly, that would leave the world blind to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. With no sense of whether or not the Iranians were rushing for a bomb, the drumbeat for a ‘preventative strike’ – which would not halt their nuclear program and would almost certainly convince them to build the weapons even if they weren’t already doing so – would grow louder by the day.

None of this is to advocate for the regime in Tehran. It is a destabilizing force in the Middle East and repressive towards its own people, full stop. That’s why the nuclear agreement was so important: It verifiably stopped the regime from building the most powerful weapons in the world, and it could have provided a stepping stone upon which to build towards further diplomatic agreements. This was all far more preferable than using force to attempt to resolve the issue, for as foolish as President Bush’s invasion of Iraq was, a war with Iran wrought by President Trump would be far worse – it is a larger, stronger, and wealthier country, with a capability to strike U.S. allies and interests that dwarf’s Iraq’s.

For now, we must wait and see if countries beyond our allies in Europe sign up for the Trump Administration’s new crusade against Iran. If they don’t, however, we may be heading down a dangerous path for the future – and doing so very much alone.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is an independent, bipartisan body responsible for key aspects of voter registration, election administration, and technical guidelines for voting systems. In the past few weeks, measures proposing an increase in its funding have come before both chambers of Congress.

Both times, they have failed.

In July, the House of Representatives voted down an increase of $380 million strictly along party lines. In the Senate late last week, a more modest $250 million was proposed; it still failed 50-47, with Tennessee’s Sen. Bob Corker the only Republican voting in favor.

The author of the Senate amendment, Connecticut Sen. Patrick Leahy, said after his measure’s failure that “The integrity of our elections, which are the foundation of our democracy, should not be a partisan issue.”

Sen. Leahy is right. So why do Republicans keep voting these measures down?

After all, we all know that the problem is real. Election infrastructure, including voter registration databases, were a target of Russian hackers in the 2016 election, per the intelligence community’s unanimous assessment. In addition, a variety of sources this summer – not least of all Russian hacking target and 2018 incumbent Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. – have confirmed that the Russians are hard at work once again trying to influence the coming midterm elections.

In the aftermath of President Trump’s embarrassing presser with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki wherein he took Putin’s side over that of the U.S. intelligence community (and a subsequent week’s worth of damage control attempts by the White House), many Republicans rightly condoned the president’s remarks. They expressed their own agreement with the intelligence community that Russian active measures remain a real threat, and urged the president not to kowtow to Putin – or to invite him to Washington this fall, in the midst of a democratic process he was actively working to undermine.

But those words of criticism, while right and welcome, are meaningless absent any real action.

This problem of rhetoric without action was mirrored by the White House last week. The administration trotted out a host of national security leaders – including Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, National Security Advisor John Bolton, FBI Director Christopher Wray, National Security Agency Director Paul Nakasone, and even embattled Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen – all to confirm a “pervasive messaging campaign by Russia to try to weaken and divide the United States” in the midterm elections. While their message was reaffirming and reassuring, it was disturbing to hear little in the way of policy specifics being undertaken to do something about the problem.

And of course, the president made matters worse not long after. Ranting and slurring at a campaign rally later that evening, he once again referred to the notion of election interference as “the Russia hoax.”

Clearly, with the executive branch ever-hobbled by its own leader’s ineffectiveness on this issue, it is up to Congress to act. Increasing funding for a simple commission that helps protect Americans’ right and ability to vote seems like it should be a pretty low bar for bipartisan cooperation.

The good news is that even with the EAC measures’ failures, there are a number of bipartisan bills to at least counter the Russia threat, including measures to impose new sanctions on Putin’s oligarch pals, prohibit the president from a unilateral withdrawal from NATO, and of course to protect Special Counsel Mueller from a politically-motivated firing.

All it takes for these common sense, national security-boosting efforts to move forward is a little bit of leadership from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell – and a modicum of courage from the rest of the congressional Republicans, too.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

In his infamous marathon testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2017, former FBI Director James Comey quipped “Lordy, I hope there are tapes.”

Those tapes – which President Donald Trump implied that he had made of his conversations with Comey – never did surface. But this week, a perhaps equally explosive one did when the lawyer of former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen shared a recording with CNN.

On that tape, then-candidate Trump and Cohen are heard discussing a number of different campaign and business matters. The most explosive part of the conversation, however, references the need to make payments to “our friend David” -who owns the parent company of the National Enquirer. The same Enquirer that, in the weeks leading up to the 2016 presidential election, purchased the rights to and then suppressed the story of Karen McDougal, a former Playboy Playmate of the Month who alleges a 2006 affair with Donald Trump.

Conversation around the tape immediately devolved into minutia, with the president’s current personal attorney Rudy Giuliani claiming that “there’s no indication of any crime being committed,” and proceeding to quibble about whether or not Trump was talking about making cash payments or not.

There is a much bigger picture issue at hand, however.

Regardless of whether or not the payment was legal, this recording clearly shows that Donald Trump was fully aware of efforts to suppress this story of an alleged affair in the lead up to his election. His campaign, through former spokeswoman Hope Hicks, had previously flatly denied that in November 2016. The White House has not answered for this revelation, and in fact banned a CNN reporter from an unrelated presser in the Rose Garden for trying to ask about it.

In addition to being complicit in covering up the McDougal story, we know – thanks to Giuliani blurting it out on live television a few months back – that the president also knew of another set of similar hush money payouts. Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, alleges an affair with Trump as well, and was paid off by Cohen shortly before the election. Per Giuliani’s admission, Trump personally reimbursed Cohen for making those payments.

It’s hard to say something is beyond the pale in the Age of Trump, but surely this is. Any other president throughout U.S. history, regardless of their own party affiliation and those in control of Congress, would face an investigation over allegations that he covered up an affair – not least of all to determine if campaign finance violations were committed in the course of doing so.

And though the president’s most ardent supporters will not like to hear it, this now undeniable pattern of lying – specifically about claims against him by women – warrants the reopening of another conversation that never should have been closed. More than a dozen women have accused Donald Trump of sexual harassment or assault, and it is the official position of the White House (per Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders) that they are all lying. Now, we know that the president himself has lied directly about two affairs – and he was, after all, caught bragging about sexual assault on tape.

All this cannot be just another blip in the chaos of the Trumpism maelstrom. As the White House lurches from one self-inflicted crisis to the next, it should not be allowed to pretend that this tape does not exist and its past denials were untruthful. And any party that once or ever claimed itself to be the stewards of ‘family values’ or government oversight or basic, simple morality must not ignore the evidence that is now before them more glaringly than ever.

This story will no doubt get more complicated in the weeks ahead as news continues to break and new tapes, undoubtedly with further details and probably with more wrongdoing exposed, continue to emerge. But the basic fact of the president’s lies are now out in the open. The only question is what, if anything, the rest of us will do about it.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

There’s no softer or more polite way to say it: President Trump groveled before Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. His display – and the conduct of his administration in the days since – sent a dangerous message to our intelligence communities here at home and audiences watching around the world, while also leaving some serious questions unanswered.

The focal point of the presser was when the president was asked point blank who he believed on Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election: his own intelligence agencies, or Vladimir Putin himself. It is a question Trump has struggled with many times before. Predictably, when asked at the presser, he whiffed; his answer was garbled per usual, but he ultimately said he “didn’t see why it would be” Russia who meddled.

Every news cycle since has been dominated by the White House’s attempts to clarify (that is, change) the president’s statement, with the president qualifying his heavily scripted walk back, saying contradictory things in different interviews, and freewheeling on Twitter. This has all been complicated by contrasting statements from national security leaders within the Trump Administration. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates maintains that the Russians are actively working to interfere in the fall midterms, while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen still can’t admit that they were helping Trump in 2016.

The net effect of all of this is a massive strain on the relationship between the White House and the intelligence community, which is self-evidently bad for our national security. It is also leading to a failure to respond to what Coates correctly identifies as an ongoing problem: Russian interference in elections to come. Perhaps because they felt the need to rally around their besieged leader, House Republicans blocked Democrats’ attempts to bolster funding for the Election Assistance Commission, which protects the critical voting infrastructure of states.

There was also optical damage done at the Trump-Putin meeting, on which the eyes of the world were trained. President Trump missed an opportunity to call out Russia’s destructive behavior on the world stage. Instead of denouncing the invasion of Crimea, the downing of a civilian airliner, the poisoning of ex-pats on foreign soil, the killing of journalists, the arrest of opposition leaders, or the protection of murderous Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, he offered his classic ‘both sides are to blame’ take when asked about the source of difficulties in the U.S.-Russian relationship.

It cannot have been a reassuring moment for our allies, who had spent the weekend prior getting variously ranted at, slandered in their local press, and otherwise degraded by a belligerent Trump. Indeed, in the first follow-up interview after Helsinki, the president took aim at NATO once again. He and Fox’s Tucker Carlson publicly puzzled over the point of collective security agreements, wondering why they should have to defend the country of Montenegro from attack. Could Putin, who attempted a coup in Montenegro in 2016, put that seed into the president’s head during their bilateral chat? We may never know.

The fact that we may never know is the third post-summit problem, and a significant one at that. Multiple times since the meeting, the Russian government has hinted at “verbal agreements” between Putin and Trump on security issues reached during the conversation. The White House has been mum on what those agreements might contain – possibly because no one knows what the president may or may not have agreed to.

It is the president’s right to make foreign policy, but it is the peoples’ right to know what that policy is. It’s an especially relevant give-and-take now given that public bipartisan outcry is one of the only tactics we have to steer the president away from terrible ideas. And so far, two of the only ideas we know came out of Putin and Trump’s conversation are indeed terrible: a ‘fox in the henhouse’-esque cybersecurity collaboration with Moscow, and the notion that Putin might be able to “question” U.S. citizens against whom he bears a grudge (denounced by the U.S. Senate in a 98-0 vote on Thursday).

Remarkably, amidst all this chaos, the White House has announced that Putin will be invited to Washington this fall, no doubt shortly before or after those elections he’s trying to influence. So at present, the only certain thing is that all this will begin anew in a few months – to what end though, no one knows.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

In 1949, President Harry Truman led the way in forming the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, known today as NATO. For more than 60 years, this alliance, founded on the idea that “an attack on one is an attack on all,” has stood as a cornerstone of the interconnected world that Truman worked to build – one of allies who share common interests and common values working together for the greater good.

NATO’s collective defense provision, Article V, has only been invoked once in its decades-long history. But the alliance wasn’t activated to answer a move of Soviet aggression, or for a stronger ally like the United States to come to the aid of a smaller, weaker one.

The only time NATO has committed troops to a cause was when it came to our aid.

Article V was invoked on September 12, 2001, less than 24 hours after the Twin Towers were struck. The first military action, Operation Eagle Assist, began less than a month later with pilots from 13 different countries flying sorties across American skies. Since then, more than 1,110 troops from NATO-allied countries have given their lives alongside U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

This is all relevant now because President Trump – who has been attacking NATO since the campaign trail – just concluded a NATO leaders’ summit in Brussels. After a week of hostile rhetoric, he opened the conference with an attack on Germany and then stayed up sending angry tweets late into the night.

The president’s standard gripe with NATO is the cost-sharing. Currently, member states are working towards a goal of spending 2 percent of their GDP on defense. President Trump, who has railed against U.S. contributions to collective defense efforts since the late 1980s, has arbitrarily demanded that this target be increased to 4 percent – a monumental ask for those not yet hitting the original goal.

The core of the president’s critique is not wrong. It has been a longstanding bipartisan U.S. foreign policy goal to encourage our NATO allies to spend more on national security. As in all things, however, his opinion is tainted by ignorance and mistruths; he continually insists that NATO members are ‘behind on dues’ or ‘owe us money,’ while neither is an accurate description of how NATO works. And of course, his blustering and cajoling delivery is unhelpful. Would a good businessman convince someone to invest in a project by degrading both them and the partnership you want them to invest in?

The modern benefits of NATO, meanwhile, transcend just what happened in 2001. Sharing bases with our allies saves the United States billions of dollars, and having troops around the world keeps our transportation costs down. There are also strategic benefits of the alliance – including the ability to train our troops alongside those of our partners. This increases readiness, including both lethality and effectiveness, and ensures interoperability, or the technical compatibility of our forces and hardware.

But the fundamental benefit of NATO is that it remains a preventative mechanism. The alliance was founded as a check on Soviet aggression (one still needed today, given that Vladimir Putin has invaded two European countries in the past ten years), but it was also an effort to keep the world from collapsing into global conflict.The costs of the alliance are a drop in a bucket compared to the carnage wrought by past world wars.

The collaborative deterrent power of NATO is what makes it the bedrock of the international system that President Truman built. The idea that countries can work together and pay into something that produces not profit but a common good – specifically, more peace – is critical. Unfortunately, it may also be anathema to President Trump’s views of politics and ‘negotiation,’ which so often focus on dominance and maximalism.

President Trump would do well to think on Truman’s worldview – as well as NATO’s demonstrated commitment to the security interests of the United States – as he concludes the summit. One can only hope that U.S. leadership in a historic organization will continue, even on his watch.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

At long last, the meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korea’s Kim Jong Un was held in Singapore.

The end result depends upon whom you ask. Both sides seemed to claim a resounding victory; Sean Hannity insisted that North Korea agreed to full denuclearization (it did not), and North Korean media claimed that Trump agreed to an end to sanctions (here’s hoping he didn’t).

In reality, the meeting produced little: a vague document indicating that talks will continue in the interest of peace and denuclearization. There were also reportedly promises made by each leader, including a missile site shutdown by Kim and the suspension of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises by Trump.

Many on the left have found themselves adrift in the messaging wilderness. On the one hand, they support diplomacy and want to avoid a catastrophic war. On the other hand, they oppose President Trump’s reckless approach to the process of negotiations to date.

These positions do not need to be mutually exclusive.

Diplomacy should always be America’s first, best choice for resolving crises on the world stage. It is good – indeed, the only good position – to support diplomacy now given the catastrophic escalatory potential of a war on the Korean Peninsula. Those who clamor for war would put the lives of thousands of American troops and millions of our allies’ citizens in the region at risk.

Preferring diplomacy to conflict, however, does not require anyone to support this meeting’s outcomes or the conduct of the man who is driving them.

For one thing, President Trump conducted his summit with no thought to optics. The Kim family has sought a direct conversation with the United States for years, hoping to portray themselves as equal powers on the world stage. President Trump handed them that victory without hesitation – and what’s more, he showered Kim (a dictator who starves, imprisons, and executes his people) with praise both at the meeting and in follow-up interviews. It is hard not to contrast the images of Trump giving his classic thumbs up to Kim or saluting a North Korean general with those taken just days before wherein he sits crossed-armed and petulant before our democratically-elected G7 allies.

Speaking of allies, the president has also conducted himself towards North Korea with little regard for our friends in the region – namely South Korea and Japan. When he temporarily canceled the summit, Seoul was caught completely off-guard; purportedly, they had the same late notification on the president’s decision to cancel joint military exercises.

The world over, other partners (while not engaged in escalating trade conflicts with Washington) are watching as U.S. policy is more divorced from shared security interests and less reliant on their critical insight. The cancellation of the exercises, meanwhile, will leave our combined forces less prepared for any possible conflict – and President Trump’s willingness to use the North Korean’s preferred terminology for them, “provocative,” is a disturbing reminder of his childlike impressionability.

But the most simple – and most important – reason to oppose President Trump’s meeting with Kim Jong Un is the same reason to oppose virtually all of his “policies” and decisions: He’s in it for him, not for us. He returned from the summit declaring that “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” But this is entirely false: Pyongyang has committed to no reductions or dismantlement, there are no new nuclear limits in place or inspectors on the ground, and the Kim regime remains a despotic and oppressive one. But the president doesn’t care about any of the technical details. All he wants is a public relations victory, and a new apparent pal on the world stage.

We must always support diplomacy. And to be sure, Trump and Kim flattering one another is preferable, from the perspective of global security, to threatening one another. But is what President Trump is practicing here truly diplomacy, in the sense that he’s working for our country’s best interests through smart, principled negotiations? He hands victories to our adversaries and alienates our allies; he achieves nothing meaningful and claims mission accomplished. This is not diplomacy, but theater – and it’s theater that will have consequences around the world.

Moving forward, all Americans must hope for and work towards peace on the Korean Peninsula. We must do so, however, while maintaining the security of ourselves and our allies and standing strong for human rights. So far, including at his much-anticipated summit, President Trump has failed to do any of that.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

Is it necessary, in the year 2018, to write that it is wrong for any country – let alone the United States of America – to forcefully separate parents from their children?

Apparently so.

The Trump Administration began doing just that at the beginning of May, when Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a ‘zero tolerance’ policy that would send parents attempting to cross the southern border to jail where children cannot follow instead of putting them together in family detention centers. Since the change was implemented, hundreds of children, including toddlers, have been taken from their parents; the resultant confusion has created a backlog within the Department of Health and Human Services.

And to be clear, this policy does not apply only to those crossing illegally. Asylum seekers – those who are fleeing extreme violence and danger in their home countries and presenting themselves to authorities – are being detained and punished in this way simply for appearing at the “wrong” location. This is, unfortunately, the logical end point of the administration treating a caravan of innocent and desperate migrants like an army marching on the southern border.

In a rare moment of humility (but a classic moment of dodging responsibility), President Trump tried not to take credit for this latest atrocity. Instead, in the midst of a classic Twitter diatribe, he blamed Democrats for a law that forced federal agents to separate mothers and fathers from their kids at the border. There is, of course, no such law; what’s more, Sessions as well as White House Chief of Staff John Kelly have both previously praised the deterrent value of their new policy. (The deterrent is not working, as arrests have risen for the third month in a row.)

In many cases, we have come to count on the incompetence of the Trump Administration to temper its malevolence. That is not a viable strategy, however, to address its action when it comes to immigration.

Time and again, it is spite rather than reason that animates this administration’s immigration policy. In the midst of a historic refugee crisis, we admit the lowest number of refugees ever despite having an exhaustive screening process that keeps us safe. Hundreds of thousands of people who have found safety and community in the United States by way of Temporary Protected Status are being forcibly evicted, sent back to countries that do not have the infrastructure to receive them. And of course, DACA – a program that enjoys vast public support, and allows those who came to our country as children through no fault of their own to stay so long as they meet higher academic and legal standards than native born citizens – was scrapped, and any attempt to renegotiate it scuttled by draconian, maximalist demands.

Against the backdrop of the president’s own history of racist words and actions, as well as his dogwhistling and winking towards white nationalists and white supremacists, it is hard not to see all of this as both deliberate and ideological. President Trump’s most ardent supporters, after all, are unapologetic in demanding what they want: a white America for white Americans. Why shouldn’t we believe them when they say it? And why shouldn’t anyone who claims not to share that goal be responsible for offering real rationale for these policies?

The world is watching the United States – specifically, watching how our leaders talk about and treat our fellow human beings. We desperately need an immigration policy based on something other than abject cruelty and flagrant racism. And there is no doubt that history will look back unkindly on those who fail to understand that what we are doing now is plain and simply wrong.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

President Trump and his most devoted allies (both in Congress and on cable news) have themselves all worked up once again.

In a matter of days, a conspiracy theory has once again become mainstream thought on the American right. The assertion this time is, very roughly, that the Deep State embedded a saboteur in the Trump campaign’s early days. It could be, per the president’s Twitter feed, “one of the biggest political scandals in history.”

It is not “one of the biggest political scandals in history.” There is no spy – the person in question was a longstanding intelligence source who was looking for information about foreign interference rather than the Trump campaign. So far, the whole episode smacks of March 2017’s hollering about President Obama’s “wiretapping” Trump Tower’s phones during the election season. A standard practice (in that case, the necessary unmasking of individuals picked up in legal surveillance of foreign activity) was amplified through so much hyperbole, fear-mongering, and innuendo that it became a wild scandal – until the president had no proof to show and everyone forgot about it and moved on.

But truth is not the point of the “spy” conversation (nor a primary concern of the Trump orbit in general). President Trump is simply out to the muddy the waters on the ongoing investigation into how he and his team were involved with Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. And with that goal of theirs in mind, it’s worth taking a moment for a Russia refresher.

We know – thanks to unanimous and public judgment of the U.S. Intelligence Community – that Russia interfered in the 2016 election specifically to benefit then-candidate Trump. At a bare minimum, they used social media influence campaigns to stoke divisions and spread misinformation. They also worked to penetrate voter rolls in key states. Thirteen Russian nationals and three Russian companies have been indicted for that behavior. It is not an opinion that Vladimir Putin helped President Trump get elected – it is a fact.

We also know that on at least three occasions, people in the Trump orbit were looking for opportunities to benefit from foreign help. The most famous instance was the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting attended by Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump Campaign Manager Paul Manafort. Trump Jr. responded to the offer of dirt on Hillary Clinton not by calling the FBI, but by saying “If it’s what you say, I love it.”

There was also Roger Stone’s back channeling with Wikileaks, which was releasing harmful emails about Democrats stolen by Russian state-sponsored hackers, as well as a new meeting wherein the hapless Trump Jr. also was offered (and possibly received – we don’t yet know) aid from the Saudis, the Emiratis, and an Israeli social media company. And despite what the president’s crack legal team may argue, accepting help in an American election from a foreign nation isn’t ‘opposition research,’ ‘politics as usual,’ or ‘a gift’ – it’s illegal.

And finally, we know that those in Trump’s orbit have tried repeatedly to hide their conversations with Russians during and after the campaign. Attorney General Jeff Sessions mislead about campaign meetings during his confirmation. Jared Kushner had to amend his security clearance form – specifically, the list of foreign contacts – over and over, to say nothing of his secret conversations about a backchannel to the Kremlin during the presidential transition. And Michael Flynn, the Trump administration’s first National Security Advisor, had to resign for lying about conversations he had with the Russian Ambassador (Flynn was later indicted; three other Trump campaign associates have been too, and two pled guilty like he did).

There are far more details beyond those, but the core, essential points remain the same: Russia interfered to help Trump win, and multiple people in the Trump orbit enthusiastically welcomed their help, as well as lied about contacts they had with Russians afterwards.

It’s easy to get lost in the evolving details and legal minutia of the Russia investigation’s entirety. Still, focusing on the core events, recurring patterns, and basic messages is key. For maximum effect, it should be done in tandem with a wider discussion of the Trump Administration’s flagrant corruption (a topic for another column all together). But harder still, we must hold onto these truths even as the president drags us all down with him into the next conspiracy theory rabbit hole.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

President Trump’s nominee to head the CIA, Gina Haspel, has been approved by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. A full vote in the Senate will soon confirm her to her new post – and a handful Democrats join the vast majority of Republicans in voting her through.

Time and again in nomination fights, this same pattern plays out: Left-leaning voters and activists across the country demand opposition from their elected representatives, issue advocates provide substantive reasons to vote against the nominees, and then a small cadre of Democrats inevitably rubber stamp the administration’s choices for key cabinet posts.

Haspel was a particularly egregious case facing bipartisan opposition, and therefore a more painful than usual letdown.

To be sure, Haspel had some strong qualifications for the job, including more than 30 years of service in the CIA. She also wasn’t fundamentally opposed to the mission of the institution she was meant to lead (like embattled Administrator Scott Pruitt of the EPA), or patently unqualified (e.g. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson).

But there still should have been an insurmountable obstacle to Haspel’s confirmation: her involvement with torture at the CIA. She previously supervised a ‘black site’ in Thailand where at least one detainee was tortured on her watch. Then, some time later and in a more senior position, she was involved in the decision to destroy video evidence of the same torture just as Congress was on the verge of investigating what was still being euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation.”

Of course, Haspel was far from the only person at the CIA involved in this behavior – and she should not suffer the consequences alone. Still, approving her to a top leadership post sends dangerous messages across the board: to President Trump, who campaigned on bringing back “a hell of a lot worse” than the CIA’s now illegal methods; to the CIA, who see a total lack of institutional accountability for past moral failures; and to the world, which should look to the United States as an exemplar of human rights rather than hypocrisy.

Three Republicans – including Arizona Senator John McCain, who experienced torture as a POW in Vietnam – opposed Haspel’s nomination even after her hearing, and others were on the fence. The votes existed to block her and demand an equally qualified CIA careerist with no prior involvement in torture for the directorship. So why did so many Senate Democrats fold in this fight, as they have done in so many others?

Some red state Democrats, who fear the ire of Trump supporters in their 2018 election campaigns, may think they are making a wise political choice. But few voters will be going to the polls this fall thinking about months-old nomination fights, and no Republican opponents (or super-PACs) will shy away from attacking incumbent Democrats as ‘obstructionists,’ no matter how many Trump picks they’ve backed. What’s more, every time they break with their base, these senators risk alienating the progressive voters and activists they absolutely must keep if they are to hold onto their seats.

The case is even more perplexing, however, for blue state Democrats, or those not up for election this fall. What other conditions beyond a fired-up activist base, clear values-based arguments, and ample political cover from respected Republicans do these senators need to take a stand? The Trump Administration is effectively a malevolent political black hole that grossly distorts the basic norms of human decency for all in its orbit; why, nearly 500 days in, would anyone who claims to oppose its agenda still extend the president or his nominees the benefit of the doubt?

As for Haspel, we must all hope that she upholds her promise to refuse any order, even one from President Trump, to restart any use of torture. And perhaps on down the road, the CIA will finally have a long overdue institutional reckoning with its past that puts morality before politics. But unfortunately, each of these seems less certain than the likelihood that – absent a sudden infusion of courage – some Senate Democrats seemed determined to disappoint when it comes to nomination fights.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].

President Trump’s decision to withdraw the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, commonly called ‘the Iran Deal,’ has gained us nothing – and could potentially cost us much on down the road.

The president’s allies delight in yet another decision that “triggered the libs” by undoing a cornerstone achievement of President Barack Obama on the world stage. But while the president may have satisfied his domestic base and his own obsession with tearing down his predecessor’s legacy, the consequences will reverberate far wider than that. His choice has left American isolated and weaker than before, and perhaps even substantially less safe.

First, we are isolated from our allies – namely the United Kingdom, France, and Germany – who remain a party to the agreement’s terms. Though the Europeans did their level best to change President Trump’s mind (French President Macron through a traditional state visit, and U.K. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson via a morning Fox News appearance), the American president would not budge. Now, as he re-imposes old sanctions, two problems emerge.

For one, our economic policies alone will not change Iran’s behavior – it was only an international sanctions regime (including reluctant partners like China and Russia) painstakingly built over years that brought Iran to the table. But worse than the United States being relegated to the sideline is the fact that in threatening to punish anyone who does business with Iran, we may end up sanctioning our own allies.

Our word as a nation is also left weaker than it was before. Right before a historic negotiation on North Korea’s nuclear stockpile, President Trump has sent a clear message: The United States cannot be trusted to adhere to diplomatic agreements. In the past, we made an effort to stay somewhat consistent from administration to administration and show that shifting domestic political winds don’t mean constant policy U-turns; President Trump has challenged that norm, not just vis-e -vis Iran but also with his critiques of NATO, punting on the Paris climate goals, and waffling on international trade.

Even for those who find that consistency argument unpersuasive, a problem remains specific to the question of nuclear weapons. The lesson North Korea may have learned this week is that if they give up their nuclear weapons, the United States may simply take back economic or security-related reciprocal benefits on down the road. This creates an incentive to maintain nuclear technology or processes in secret – which in turn creates the risk that they will be caught in this cheating behavior. It is a potentially vicious cycle.

And finally, there are long-term security risks presented by President Trump’s withdrawal. For now, limits on and inspections of Iran’s program remain, thanks to the other countries that are keeping with the agreement. But should it collapse completely (in which case the United States will certainly be blamed), Iran will be left with no constraints on its program whatsoever – and we’ll have no way to know what they’re up to, which could set us on a course for a conflict in the Middle East far worse than even the Iraq War.

A possible military conflict might not be limited to just the United States and Iran, either. Saudi Arabia has already said that if Iran restarts its nuclear program, they will take corresponding action. If the Saudis begin pushing for the bomb, other countries in the Middle East surely will too; this new arms race would blow more than 40 years’ worth of work in building international norms and rules against the proliferation of the most dangerous weapons in the world.

President Trump certainly has a talent for playing to his domestic audience. But this week, he has forgotten once again that there is a world beyond him and his fellow Fox News viewers. By withdrawing the United States from an agreement that was working to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapon, he has opened us up to consequences for months and years to come. Unfortunately, for now, there’s little more we can do than watch to see what happens next.

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Copyright 2018 Graham West, distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

Graham West is the Communications Director for Truman Center for National Policy and Truman National Security Project, though views expressed here are his own. You can reach West at [email protected].