UPDATE, SEPT 7: I joined Ireland’s RTE Prime Time for a discussion on Thursday night about the “Quiet Resistance” and issues of Donald Trump’s competence, temperament, and possible danger to the US and to American allies.
The other panellist is Trump supporter and law lecturer Seth Barrett-Tillman.
Watch Discussion from 13:45
What you’re seeing are current officials trying to hold out against the President and trying to hold their positions because they think they are the last firewall against him….
This is probably the most tense time in international relations since 1945 and what you are hearing from these people — not as Republicans, not as Democrats, not as left, not as right — is that at this point, we have a President who may be the most dangerous since 1945.
I spoke with British, Irish,and Austrian radio on Wednesday and Thursday about further revelations of Donald Trump’s incoherent, ill-informed, and “amoral” leadership, in excerpts from Bob Woodward’s forthcoming book and in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times by a “senior Administration offical”.
Listen to BBC Radio 5 Live
I think [the author of The New York Times article] is someone in the national security establishment. That brings out the important wider point: for 18 months, Donald Trump has been at war with his national security agencies. He’s attacked the FBI, he’s attacked the CIA and compared them to Nazis at one point, and he’s attacked the State Department.
What you’re seeing is not just one official v. Donald Trump. You’re seeing an expression of US agencies no longer trusting the man who is Commander-in-Chief.
Listen to Austria’s Radio FM4 from 12:16
The message from this and from others is to Republicans: you’ve got to stop being co-dependent on Trump and allowing him to get away with this because of your own individual interests.
At some point you have got to call him to account which, by and large, Republicans in Congress have not done.
Listen to BBC Radio Scotland
A discussion setting out the situation around Trump and knocking back the argument of Trump supporter Charlie Wolf — without reading Woodward’s extracts — that it is all “tittle tattle”:
We’re talking about a disfunctional Administration led by a man who is ill-informed, who is impulsive, who is tempermental, who is willing to consider going to war or assassination, who is insulting of his agencies.
And this portrayal of a man-child is not new.
See TrumpWatch, Day 594: The “Quiet Resistance” Within the Trump Administration
Listen to talkRADIO from 23:33 in 0830-0900 Segment
We’ve had stories like this since the start of the Trump Administration. But what distinguishes this is that it comes from Bob Woodward, who spent the past 40 years chronicling Presidents — and he’s not only got interviews with those close to Trump, he’s got them on audiotape.
I suspect that White House will push back the waves over the next few days, hoping it all goes away. And then the big question is: Who Takes the Fall?…
The problem is that there are fewer people around who can check Trump. When you get to the point where aides are stealing papers off Trump’s desk so he can’t see them and overreact, you know that any point — it doesn’t matter how many people we hope can hold the line — something can break.
