320 - Trump's Banana Republic

Banana republics are usually run by kleptocrats who are mostly interested in monetizing and profiting from their ascension to power. They take over hapless states where the rule of law is irrelevant and easily abused, where the populace is denied political participation, where human rights and essential freedoms are mostly denied or brushed aside, and where rulers behave idiosyncratically, arbitrarily, erratically, and impulsively. Banana republics are operated as private commercial enterprises for the exclusive profit of the ruling class.

O. Henry, the American writer, coined the actual phrase in 1904 to describe Central American states. But, as a term of descriptive derision, it now denotes those corrupt places around the globe where governance is organized whimsically, and by ignorant individuals interested only in their narcissistic attainments. Flattery and obsequiousness override policymaking; the fate of courtiers depends on quirks of fate, tv appearances, caprice, and antagonism to competence and talent.

We are rapidly taking on the trappings of a classical banana republic. Trump seems intent on destroying (more than disrupting) government. His nominations for essential positions in Washington or overseas are, at best, nihilistic; at worst they show contempt for sensible or stable government. Those places that Trump has derided as "shithole" countries mostly have greater respect for the arts of government than Trump shows. No nation anywhere, not even the most corrupt and mismanaged of the world's 194 countries, has gone out of its way to nominate for high office such a collection of unqualified misfits, several of whom are convicted felons (like Trump), several of whom are electoral losers, and most are unqualified except (in his eyes) that they have looked good (to him) on Fox television. Banana republic indeed!

Here are just a few of the many key problems:

1) Serious hostilities in the Middle East affect our national security interests and initiatives. Relations with Iran and Saudi Arabia are evolving daily, thanks to Syria's implosion and Israel's victories over Hezbollah, plus Israel's flattening of Gaza. Washington needs clear sight and steady ideas to forge a winning strategy from Cairo to Tehran. So, Trump, the banana republic operator par excellence, turns to a father-in-law of a daughter. Massad Boulos happens to be of Lebanese descent. But he is a minority Christian, has not lived or dealt with Middle Eastern matters except just recently, and he misrepresented his working success and wealth. What country in the world would rely for advice regarding a critical part of the world on the manager (not the owner) of a small truck selling operation in Nigeria -- a splendid country but one far removed from the Arab world (and one place Trump has used expletives to describe)? Only a banana republic would do that, and without any vetting.

But, to be fair, Trump is going to have two Middle Eastern advisors. The second one is Steve Witkoff, a real estate owner and golfing buddy who is heavily enmeshed in Trump's new crypto currency profiteering enterprise. Witkoff and Trump's son Eric are working closely with a crypto executive who the Securities and Exchange Commission has been investigating for fraud. Does Witkoff have any qualifications for this new role? Can his wisdom about the Middle East supersede the careful analyses of professionals? But in banana republics rulers listen to their cronies, not to experienced experts.

2) Ambassadors don't usually make policy, but they can influence policy making as Ambassador Nicholas Burns does in Beijing and his namesake (but no relation) William Burns did from Moscow before becoming one of the most accomplished directors of the CIA in modern times. Political appointees can also make good ambassadors, as Caroline Kennedy did in Japan and does now in Australia, and as a Rahm Emmanuel does now in Tokyo. But when Trump nominates his son-in-law's father, a convicted fraudster once prosecuted by Chris Christie, to become ambassador to an important ally like France, our banana republic status is much more evident.

Several other ambassadorial nominations are of the same questionable poor quality: Kimberley Guilfoyle to be ambassador to Greece! Tom Barrack to Turkey! The first is an ex-girlfriend of a Trump son, the second a Trump buddy who was acquitted of illegal lobbying.

3) Running our large and expensive defense establishment is critical, especially in wartime. Only a banana republic would put its safety in the hands of a confirmed drinker and admitted harasser of women. And now Republican woman senators seem poised to enable the potential appointment of Pete Hegseth.

4) Propagating the best message about the United States, especially for consumption across a world well-plied with Russian and Chinese, not to mention Iranian, misinformation and digital consternation, is absolutely essential in these immensely troubled times. We don't want the big messages about American integrity and support for the under-privileged to be muffled. We want our soft-power status to be enhanced. We also cannot afford to reduce the reliance oppressed and controlled citizens everywhere place on the dissemination of accurate information and reporting. VOA has a global audience of 354 million listeners. But, in his banana republic way, Trump seeks to appoint Kari Lake to head the Voice of America -- our beacon of first-rate news, not propaganda. (Technically, the process of appointing someone to run VOA is quite involved, with several intermediate steps.)

Trump and Lake intend to diminish the VOA's status as an impartial and truthful presenter of true news. "Under my leadership," she says, "the VOA will...[chronicle] America's achievements worldwide." The law establishing the VOA affirms, however, that the role of the VOA is to be "accurate, objective, and comprehensive." It is charged with representing all of America, not just a partisan project appropriate to a banana republic. Remember, too, that both Trump and Lake hate reporters -- "enemies of the people" -- and fear critical coverage, calling anything that uncovers their follies "fake." Trump has also threatened to "strip" broadcasters like CNN of their licenses to be on the air -- exactly what banana republics do.

Only someone who has no desire to govern well would fill his cabinet and other institutional appointments with persons so marginal. Lake was a tv presenter, but her other qualifications appear to be twice losing senatorial and governorship elections to better qualified persons. And for being a loudmouth who backed Trump earlier and bought into the fake 2020 election claims.

5) In the foreign policy realm, and domestically in terms of catching spies as well as ordinary criminals, operating sophisticated arsenals of intelligence of the kind that the U. S. has constructed laboriously since the innocent days before World War II is imperative. Given the coming war with China and the ongoing conflict with Putin's Russia, the defense of our endangered and open realm depends on careful and experienced leadership. This is why it is both dangerous and destructive to let a friend of Putin and deposed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad like Tulsi Gabbard become our overall head of intelligence and for Trump to replace a well-versed FBI director like Christopher Wray with a bomb-throwing nudnick like Kash Patel. Together their qualifications are nil.

But whereas Gabbard's incompetence, surrounded by intelligence professionals, would soon become apparent, Patel is both unqualified and on a typical banana republic mission to wreak revenge on his enemies, on Trump's enemies, and on "the system" -- what he calls the "deep state." Patel, typically, has also misrepresented his credentials and his experience. He claims to have led a Department of Justice investigation into what the U. S. did in Benghazi in 2012 and with regard to subsequent prosecutions. He says he was in charge, but he was not even much involved.

More important than Patel's misrepresentations is his much publicized intent to "go after" a published list of sixty or so named "enemies." Banana republics organize witch hunts. These United States do not. Everything Patel and his boss are about in this realm are antithetical to the sober running of a well-calibrated democracy -- the defender of freedom and human rights throughout the world. Patel has threatened to fire most of the FBI's personnel. Doing something like that would really protect us from foreign enemies and internal criminal pursuits and turn us into the largest banana republic across the globe.

6) What major (or even minor) country tampers with the public health outcomes of its citizens and of the world? Only a banana republic would try to end vaccinations for polio at the very same time as Nigeria is stepping up its campaign to vaccinate its citizens against measles and malaria. Why allow someone with no medical expertise or knowledge, and little experience, to preside over one the U.S.' two major cabinet ministries? The lunatics have taken over the asylum, running it into the ground.

Robert Kennedy Jr wants to ban junk food and high-fructose corn syrup from the American diet. Good luck with that, especially around the White House. But everything that Kennedy also wants to accomplish -- banning fluoride in water supplies and ceasing vaccinations -- are overwhelmingly opposed by American experts in science, biology, public health, and medicine. Even Mitch McConnell, a Trump enabler, has come out against the mad notion that we should stop vaccinating against polio, an enormous success since 1959 in preventing infantile paralysis from destroying the lives of children in our country and globally. McConnell contracted polio as a young person.

What is the point of trying to install nay sayers and anti-established knowledge performers like Kennedy, Patel, Gabbard, Lake, Hegseth, and a legion of equally incompetent bomb-throwers into the government of our country? Ignorance cannot substitute for excellence, even in a banana republic.

Thus, will a few Republican senators have enough gumption and common sense to vote down at least the most dangerous and least competent of Trump's nominees? That is the key question as Trump sets out to try to rule omnipotently. God save this glorious republic!