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When the president’s opponents violate norms to undermine him, they do lasting damage to American security.
Quote:
Leaking the transcript of a presidential call to a foreign leader is unprecedented, shocking, and dangerous. It is vitally important that a president be able to speak confidentially—and perhaps even more important that foreign leaders understand that they can reply in confidence.
Thursday’s leak to The Washington Post of President Trump’s calls with the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Australia will reverberate around the world. No leader will again speak candidly on the phone to Washington, D.C.—at least for the duration of this presidency, and perhaps for longer. If these calls can be leaked, any call can be leaked—and no leader dare say anything to the president of the United States that he or she would not wish to read in the news at home.
In March, I warned about the risk of judicial overreach:
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In response to the danger posed by Trump, other American power holders will be tempted to jettison their historic role too, and use any tool at hand—no matter how doubtfully legitimate—to stop him. Those alternative power holders may even ultimately win. But in winning, they may discover themselves in the same tragic position as that Vietnam-era army officer who supposedly said: “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.”
Why not just forget the wall and make Mexico pay the costs for educating their citizens? I think it would be more defensible to tax their money transfers to offset their societal costs than waste money on a wall people in the border states most affected don't want and don't believe will make a discernible difference.
You didn't read the transcripts, did you? The Mexican President conveyed, loud and clear, that the entire wall situation was a mess of Trump's own doing, that Trump would have to clean it up, and that there would be no help coming from south of the border.
When the president’s opponents violate norms to undermine him, they do lasting damage to American security.
Good op-ed, but you missed some of the best parts of the article.
"...Best of all, from that same national-security point of view, the transcripts reveal Trump as an arrant fool without actually compromising any important U.S. national interest. Speaking to the president of Mexico, Trump claims he won the state of New Hampshire because it is a “drug-infested den.” Trump won the state’s Republican primary, but lost New Hampshire in 2016, and that quote will not help him do better in 2020..."
"...Trump’s violation of basic norms of government has driven people who would otherwise uphold those norms unto death to violate them in their turn. Contempt for Trump’s misconduct inspires counter-misconduct...."
It's very clear from the transcript that Trump only cares how he looks from a political standpoint. Via the conversation, he turns the conversation to how it will impact TRUMP. He's a master politician making policy by how it 'makes him look'.
Here are quotes from Trump (from the OP's link):
would make him look like a "dope" and "a weak and ineffective leader"
"is going to kill me"
"makes me look so bad"
".. puts me in a bad position"
" it is embarrassing to me."
"It is an embarrassment to me,"
"So you put me back on the hook."
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