Maybe Nikki was the one who wrote the stinging op-ed to the NYTimes about a resistance movement within the Trump administration, and has been ratted out? In order for both sides to save face, she resigned under the pretense of having to see her daughters through college.
It is odd that she should resign before the midterms and not afterward when there is usually some turnover over in a presidential administration. Trump was rather sanguine about it up front, but who knows what will come out in his rallies. He's not one to keep a tight upper lip.
My feeling is that Nikki had enough. At 46, she still has a bright political future ahead of her, especially if she can shed her association with Trump. Some are speculating she might be angling for Lindsey Graham's seat, should the antebellum senator be picked as new Attorney General after the midterms. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions is pretty much finished in what turned out to be a thankless job for all the support he gave Trump during the campaign.
Speculation abounds that Donald may pick one of his offspring for the position. Ivanka has apparently withdrew her name from consideration. Trump could nominate Kanye West, who will be visiting Washington soon, ostensibly to discuss the violence in Chicago, where he plans to drop anchor. He's kind of like an adopted son. Most likely Trump will pick a nationalist pit bull like Richard Grenell, who is currently serving as his ambassador to Germany, fomenting nationalist sentiment in Bavaria and other conservative strongholds throughout Europe.
It doesn't seem like Trump cares what the world thinks of him, judging from his speech two weeks ago. Interesting that Nikki's resignation follows so closely on the heels of that darkly adversarial presentation of his Me First, I mean America First doctrine.
As Fareed Zakaria pointed out, the United States is now pretty much alone in the world. He referenced a new book, The Empty Throne, which castigates Trump's American First doctrine, noting how it creates a massive void in the geopolitical world that allows China and Russia to fill with little concern for the security crises that affect the United States.
The Trump administration revels in its short-term gains - resolving a trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, while having no vision of how it fits within the larger global trading network. In the conservative mind, globalism is bad as it allows nations to form alliances often against America's best interests.
Trump has dredged up OPEC again as the reason for the soaring oil prices, but as the House of Saud pointed out, oil is traded as a commodity, no longer subject to the dictates of oil producing nations. Also, the US could easily satisfy its oil needs within the new USMCA Trump is proposing, as all three North American nations have large oil reserves. Fact is Trump didn't consider how much impact Iran has on the world oil supply, before launching another round of punitive sanctions.
This has been the problem with the Trump administration from the start -- it works on a very narrow range of self interests, ostensibly to feather the nests of its conservative billionaire backers, without taking into account all the forces at work in the world. Trump and his immediate advisers seem to live in the 1980s before China, India and Brazil became big players on the international stage, and the EU was nothing like it is now -- an economic union that is virtually equals America in terms of GDP.
For their part, the Trumpists are trying to destroy the EU from within: pushing Brexit and promoting far-right governments in Italy and Austria that they hope will one day also decide to go it alone. However, there is no sign yet the new Italian and Austrian governments have any interest in leaving the EU. Their main concerns are immigration.
At the UN, the US has chosen to withdraw from UNESCO, the Human Rights Council and is no longer funding UN Palestinian refugees. It seems only a matter of time before the US withdraws from the UN all together, which the Trump administration views as antithetical to its self-interests. Nothing really new here as the Bush administration similarly took a belligerent tone with the UN, but it at least kept up appearances.
I imagine Nikki Haley had a hard time explaining all these rash actions to her fellow diplomats while at the same time maintaining a defiant stance to please Trump and his conservative backers. In that sense, she was in the same precarious position as Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but on a much larger stage.
It's interesting how Trump exploits women in this way. It would make more sense to have men be his political bully boys, but it seems this is a calculated move to make it look like he is extending power to women to act on his behalf. We heard a similar version of this in Kavanaugh's testimony, where he proudly proclaimed he will be the first Supreme Court justice to have all women clerks. Women are essentially the "wives" seen in The Handmaid's Tale, allowed a modicum of privilege within a male-dominated society, but not so much that they have any ability to challenge it.
Maybe Nikki got tired of wearing a blue dress?
Comments
Post a Comment