Unfit for the presidency

For more than three weeks, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her staff had quietly planned an international trip to Brussels and Afghanistan to check in on America’s longest war. Like most congressional delegations—“CODELs”—it was time-consuming work, involving coordination between numerous agencies, stakeholders, and international officials along with extra security briefings because of the danger of the destination.

[...]

Two senior officials on the ground in Afghanistan said they received the itinerary for the trip, as they do other congressional trips, weeks in advance and held it close to the chest. Fellow members of Congress made similar accommodations as they prepared to accompany the Speaker on the CODEL.

And then, with minutes to go before they departed, President Trump pulled the plug.

[...]

Trump’s stated reason in cancelling the CODEL was the fact that the government remains shut down. But the more obvious explanation was that the president had been searching for a way to fire back at the Speaker after she had informed him that his State of the Union address would be postponed until a resolution on the shutdown was reached.

Left unappreciated by the back and forth was just how impulsive the president’s swift response truly was.

  Daily Beast

No, I think we all appreciate that fact. Plus the fact that it was childish, unpresidential, and caused a great deal of unnecessary turmoil, waste, and possibly danger.

White House officials told CNN that Trump had coordinated with the Department of Defense about the decision to prohibit the use of military aircraft for Pelosi. But as of the time of this publication, staffers in the Pentagon were furiously scrambling to gather information about the cancellation.

“We’re still gathering information just like you,” one Pentagon official told The Daily Beast. “We are trying to figure out what is going on.” One other source inside the Pentagon said that the White House had not coordinated with senior officials in Kabul about the cancellation, either.

This is no way to run a country. In the words of Representative Rashida Tlaib, impeach the motherfucker.

Pelosi’s trip was to come during a particularly sensitive geopolitical moment. The Speaker was to stop in Brussels to meet with top NATO commanders amid Trump’s continued criticism of the transcontinental alliance. And she was to visit Afghanistan amid news that the president would significantly drawback U.S. troops from the ground, two source with the U.S. Marines in Kabul said.

Trump is set to roll back close to half of all U.S. troops in Afghanistan, dealing a significant blow to the progress the U.S. has made over the last six months to help broker peace talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban, those same sources said.

[...]

The announcement of the drawback has significantly lowered morale among officials and soldiers.

And Pelosi’s team, too, said it wanted a chance to visit the troops in Afghanistan—where Trump has never been—to understand exactly what was happening on the ground.

[...]

Within an hour of the White House’s announcement, the Trump campaign was already fundraising off of the tit-for-tat. The Trump Make America Great Again Committee, a joint fundraising account for the campaign and the Republican National Committee, blasted out an email with the subject line “I’m disinvited?”

“Democrats have illegitimately ‘disinvited’ me from making my scheduled and VERY important State of the Union Address,” the email complained. “Americans DEMAND the truth, so we need to make a CLEAR STATEMENT and raise $1,OOO,OOO by Midnight TONIGHT to show your support for Border Security (the REAL security concern).”

God, these people are low.

As the world burns.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.