Here’s where the Mueller investigation seems to stand. Buckle up, kids: it just might be a bumpy ride.
An Ivy-educated gay friend supports Trump.
How can this be, I ask him every week or two.
“Loathsome person,” he responded most recently in the wake of the Syria pull-out. “But right policies. See Andrew Sullivan.”
“Andrew Sullivan,” I wrote back, “was wrong to support Bush in 2000 and is wrong about Syria. You and he are siding with Putin and Erdogan and ISIS and Iran. Why do you trust their judgment over Secretary Mattis’s and so many Republicans and Democrats? And are 2,000 American troops in Syria — encountering few or no casualties — really much of a war we need suddenly to end? Why — moving on to other topics — is it the right policy to turn away asylum seekers and cage their children? The right policy to demand a physical wall? The right policy to ban transgender troops? The right policy to weaken the health care law with nothing to replace it? The right policy to alienate our allies? The right policy to embolden journalist-murdering autocrats? The right policy to start a trade war with Canada? The right policy to abandon TPP and replace the American Century with the Chinese Century? The right policy to exit the Paris Climate Accords? The right policy to move the Court further right? The right policy to weaken trust in the press and the courts and science and the FBI?”
I got no direct answers.
Instead, I got this 2005 clip of Illinois Senator Barack Obama, as if to say, “see? your guy once shared Trump’s views.”
But that’s so wrong. Like most Democrats, Senator Obama was for border security. (During his presidency, he was tough on illegal immigration. Net migration from the south fell to zero.) But a 2000-mile physical wall is not the best solution. And surrendering at the border seeking asylum is not illegal.
Comprehensive Immigration Reform — which included funding for border security — passed the Senate 68-32 in 2013 and would have passed the House and been signed into law if the Republican Speaker had allowed it to come to a vote. Paul Abrams suggests Speaker Pelosi pass that exact same bipartisan bill (co-authored by Marco Rubio and Chuck Schumer) on January 3rd.
It should be an interesting winter. Game on.
Have a great weekend.
