Essential to the art of the deal is to say ‘No Deal’

Photo of the day is Germany’s Angela Merkel in a cluster of Europeans going nose to nose with Donald Trump at the G-7 summit in Quebec, while Trump sits serenely with arms crossed. No need to translate that body language!

The New York Times bleats, “Trump is trying to wreck America’s alliances.” A more nuanced (back atcha!) reading would employ the verb “reset” rather than “wreck.” Did Trump not tell voters he was going to reset American trade?

Locally, liberal Democrat blogger Greg Humphrey often surprises with uncommon good sense, including support for Madison’s police. So we’ll give him a bye on an uncharacteristic blogburst, “Donald Trump is blowing up the American Century while under-educated supporters open another beer and scratch themselves.”

Talk about a stereotype! Was confounded during the 2016 campaign by the surprising (to me) number of Trump supporters who were just as likely to order a single-malt Scotch whisky or a cabernet sauvignon. At least Greg didn’t unleash another obscenity-laced tirade like Robert De Niro did at Sunday night’s (06-10-18) Tony awards. (Imagine if Roseanne had showered Obama with profanity.)

Go scratch yourself

To Greg, Mr. De Niro, and the New York Times editorialists we offer an antidote in this essay appearing in Sunday’s Times (much credit). Christopher Buskirk, editor of the journal American Greatness, writes that he would not be surprised if the Trump movement picks up support in this year’s mid-term elections. We risk fair usage by quoting extensively but there’s much more at the link:

Republicans have long criticized Democrats for dividing the country into competing grievance groups. … That’s why Mr. Trump’s rhetoric works. When he speaks off the cuff, he talks about “we,” “us” and “our.” He has said repeatedly that we love our farmers, our police, our flag and our national anthem — even our coal miners. 

Most Republicans accept his transgressive personality and his intentional tweaking of social and political norms because they see it as in service of those larger ideas. That will seem counter-intuitive to Trump haters, but fiddling with tax rates, however necessary and beneficial, can’t sustain a political movement, let alone a nation. Issues of citizenship and solidarity — that is to say, asking what it means to be an American — have returned to the fore. …

The three-legged stool of the new Republican majority is a pro-citizen immigration policy, a pro-worker economic policy and a foreign policy that rejects moral imperialism and its concomitant foreign wars.  …

Democrats like Mark Penn, a former Clinton pollster and confidant, are sick of the scandal mongering. Mr. Penn wrote recently that “Rather than a fair, limited and impartial investigation, the Mueller investigation became a partisan, open-ended inquisition that, by its precedent, is a threat to all those who ever want to participate in a national campaign or an administration again.”

At some point, the combination of scandal fatigue — there is almost no crime of which Mr. Trump is not regularly accused — and the continuing revelations of improprieties by government officials (in the F.B.I., at the Department of Justice and elsewhere) will lead voters to believe that Mr. Trump got a raw deal. … while others are expressing concern that Mr. Mueller’s investigation — his dawn raids and strong-arm tactics — don’t play well in Peoria.

Is Mueller all you’ve got?

Remind anyone of Wisconsin’s John Doe II? Anyone? Buskirk continues:

 If Mr. Mueller is not able to prove collusion with Russia, the stated reason for his appointment, then Democrats, who have talked about little else for the past 18 months, will be left looking unserious or worse. They’re right to worry.

Donald Trump is giving the world a seminar on the art of the deal. “A signature Trump tactic is to respond to every attack with a stronger counterstrike,” a Wall Street Journal analysis finds.

When Beijing threatened to match his tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods, he threatened to put tariffs on $100 billion. When North Korea increased missile tests, he vowed to respond with “fire and fury.” His maximum-pressure campaign on the nation involved imposing economic sanctions, pressing Beijing to reduce its business with Pyongyang and asking his national-security team to develop military options for striking North Korea.

The moves increased fears of war but were followed by the June 12 summit plans.

Blaska’s Bottom Line: Reminds us of “Tear down this wall.” Oh, how the Left howled!