Dear Trump: Even the Smartest People Alive Are Int

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Dear Trump: Even the Smartest People Alive Are Intimidated by the Presidency

Don't make excuses. Read the briefings.

By Charles P. Pierce

Dec 12, 2016

We begin Monday's dispatch from Camp Runamuck in Manhattan with a visit to some of the Sunday gobshitery, which used to be our semi-regular weekly Monday feature until overtaken by events and insanity.

Anyway, the president-elect went on with Chris (I Am Not Adopted) Wallace on the Fox News Channel, and Wallace pressed El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago on why he's been blowing off his intelligence briefings. The president-elect's reply was, well, stunning. CNBC chronicles this bit of the onrushing catastrophe.

"You know, I'm, like, a smart person. I don't have to be told the same thing in the same words every single day for the next eight years. Could be eight years — but eight years. I don't need that. But I do say, 'If something should change, let us know.'

Objection, Your Honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.

I know a lot of smart people, smarter even than the president-elect, if you can believe that, and I'm sure he can't. There isn't one of them that is prepared to be President of the United States, and they're all smart enough to know that, so they, you know, don't run for the damn job. And, should fate drop the job on their heads, every one of them would realize that, maybe, they need a little help from people who know more about stuff than they do.

For example, I know this guy who's a whiz at physics. He's probably the smartest person I know. If, somehow, he became president of the United States, he would assume, just because he knows his point-particle from a hole in the ground, that doesn't mean he knows everything about the historical background of the Sunni-Shia violence, or the intricacies of information piracy.

In other words, he knows what he doesn't know. The president-elect doesn't know what he doesn't know and, what's worse, he thinks he knows what he doesn't know. Dude, very often, "something changes" extremely quickly. I have a horrible vision of him, walking into the Oval Office on December 7, 1941, and asking Reince Priebus, "OK, so what's this Japan thing I heard about this morning?"
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The president-elect doesn't know what he doesn't know and, what's worse, he thinks he knows what he doesn't know.

Of course, this all may be moot because he's screwing around with China on his own again. Per NBC News:

Trump said Sunday that he could do away with the so-called "one-China" policy — an agreement by the United States to effectively side with China in its sovereignty dispute with the self-proclaimed republic of Taiwan… "China expresses serious concern on this subject,"

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters. "If the [one China policy] is compromised or interfered with, any sound and steady development in China-U.S. relations and cooperation in various fields is out of the question…"I fully understand the 'one China' policy, but I don't know why we have to be bound by a 'one China' policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade," Trump said.

Luckily, as soon as he's nominated, he will have the cool heads and steady intellects of people like Michael Flynn and John Bolton advising him.

Meanwhile, out in the hiring hall, we see that Senator Heidi Heitkamp, nominal Democrat of North Dakota, may be prepared to go over the side, because what does the Department of Agriculture need more than a cheerleader for Big Ag and one of America's biggest pipeline fans?

This, of course, would mean that a special election would have to be held, and that Heitkamp's seat almost certainly would go to an actual Republican so, thanks ever so much, Heidi. You've really been a joy.

Also, those people who once thought the president-elect was running not to be president, but merely to establish his brand for a Trump TV television news network, probably underestimated the possibility that he could achieve both goals. Tiger Beat On The Potomac sends us the news.

Buried on page 1,404 of the National Defense Authorization Act that passed last week is a provision that would disband the bipartisan board of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the independent U.S. agency that includes Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, and the Middle East Broadcast Networks…That change, combined with a 2013 legislative revision that allows the network to legally reach a U.S. audience, which was once banned, could pave the way for Trump-approved content created by the U.S. diplomacy arm, if he chooses to exploit the opportunity. Essentially, Trump is finally getting his Trump TV – financed by taxpayers to the tune of $800 million per year.

Up Next On Voice Of America/Trump TV: a very special holiday episode of Where In The Hell Is Yemen, Anyway?

But, hold on, what's this I find on the electric Twitter machine this morning? Could it be something resembling … common sense? One of our favorite subjects of discussion here in the shebeen over the years has been the F-35 strike fighter, aka The Flying Swiss Army Knife, the boondoggle to which all Defense Department boondoggles doggle their boons.

This is the miracle warplane that may have started off as a coffeemaker for all anyone knows at this point, but which now is devouring the defense budget and once became famous because its ejector-seat mechanism was even money to decapitate the pilot. Somehow, as Reuters tells us, the F-35 engaged the president-elect's attention span for a moment.

"The F-35 program and cost is out of control," Trump said on Twitter. "Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th."

Now, I do not believe the president-elect has the political skill to choke off funding for this magnificent specimen of what Barney Frank called "military Keynesianism." Too many influential members of Congress from both parties have arranged for their districts to have a piece of this giant lemon.

(By the way, this latter group includes Bernie Sanders.) Hell, I doubt whether he even remembers that he mentioned it at all 15 minutes after he put down his electric Twitter machine. But you take what brightness you can get here in the deep, dark woods.

What fresh hell does today have in store, anyway?

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