2017 Apr 12^th

Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary, has committed a boo-boo. In comparing Hitler and Assad, Spicer claimed that even Hitler never used poison gas. What he meant, and shortly clarified, was that Hitler never used poison gas militarily. Hitler did use poison gas to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews and other people he considered undesirable.  Spicer never denied that. Spicer, often the target of the press for his belligerence during his press conferences, was quick to express his regrets for this obvious blunder. He has been apologizing for this gaffe ever since he made it.

I think the piling on has been overdone. Spicer is out of his depth in this job; he is simply not quick enough mentally to be able to deal with the press corps so he winds up frustrated and then hostile and finally ludicrous. The piling on in this instance leaves some Democrats looking foolish: I think particularly of former leader Nancy Pelosi insisting that Trump should demand Spicer’s resignation. Such remarks are not useful. Pelosi should save her hyperbolic indignation for those times when it would be helpful and this is not one of those.

Spicer’s gaffes are not an existential threat to this country. Sending a battle group to rattle the saber off Korea could lead the unstable Kim to do something that would irritate the equally unstable Trump. and then things could go boom! To add to this we have Trump suggesting that we might put nuclear armaments back into South Korea. This will not cool things down in that region.

Tillerson in Moscow is at least as variable in his positions as is Trump. He insists that the Syrian people must decide if Assad stays, then he claims that there can be no peace with Assad as head of state. Now he is accusing Russia of knowingly helping Assad to gas his people. Putin claims that there has been no hard evidence that Assad did the gassing and wants to see what proof we have of that. (We’ll just forget the thousands of barrel bombs Assad used against civilians for the time being.) Tillerson is being told by both Russia and by Iran that if there is another missile strike against Syria there will be a military response. Is this bluster? We’ll find out.

Meanwhile, back home in the White House the president has told Bannon and Kushner to “work it out or he, the president, will work it out.” If Trump works it out it will be Bannon who winds up “out.”

As usual there is no consistency here and very little truth: Trump was nearly reduced to blubbering by the pictures he saw and now, apparently solely on the basis of those pictures, we are re-engaged with the world…a position we should have taken from the beginning. Perhaps if Trump had not insisted on “America First” there would have been no pictures.