Esquire
We Need a White House Insider to Stand Up to Trump’s Wartime Insanity. I’m Not Optimistic.
Charles P. Pierce
I didn’t think it was possible, but the Sunday Gobshite Shows have become immeasurably worse—so immeasurably worse that I find myself pining for the comedy stylings of Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke. To be fair, this time around, it’s not entirely the fault of the hosts and their panellists. The source of this weekly degradation of both language and the truth is entirely caused by the incredible legion of liars, grifters, incompetents, otherwise unemployables, and belligerent dickwads with whom El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago has surrounded himself and inflicted upon the rest of us.
And it starts at the top. Doing one of his very bizarre stand-ups in the aisle of Air Force One, the president was asked about why 5,000 members of the American military were needed for duty in the totally obliterated country of Iran. Hilarity ensued. From Mediaite:
After the reporter asked, “Can you explain why you’re sending 5,000 marines and sailors?” Trump snapped, “You’re a very obnoxious person,” before moving on to another question. During the same press gaggle, Trump also attacked a reporter for asking him about a controversial fundraising email, which outraged many after it featured a photo from the dignified transfer ceremony of six U.S. servicemembers killed as a result of the ongoing Iran war.
Upon hearing the question, Trump demanded to know who the reporter worked for. After she informed him that she worked for ABC News, Trump called the network “one of the worst, most fake, most corrupt.” “Will you comment on the dead soldiers?” the reporter pressed, to which Trump replied, “You know what, ABC News?” I think it may be the most corrupt news organization on the planet. I think they’re terrible.”
Then there was Karoline Leavitt, failed congressional candidate from the state of New Hampshire, plying her trade as a White House lawn ornament.
Yes, the president is speaking with our allies in Europe and many of our partners in the Gulf and the Arab world to encourage them to do more to open the Strait of Hormuz. And our NATO allies especially need to step up…. He’s calling on them to do the right thing.
Leave aside the facts that a) the president is fairly begging the entire rest of the world to bail his sorry ass out and b) our NATO allies have every right to tell a lunatic who’s used them as a punching bag for ten years and who openly lusted after a piece of Denmark’s territory and just appreciate the feigned innocence it takes to imagine Donald Trump’s appeal to anyone to “do the right thing.” Stop it, lady. You’re killing me here
Here’s Secretary of Talking About War Pete (Call of Duty). Hegseth, blithely telling Major Garrett of CBS News that more people who are not him will have to die in pursuit of whatever the fck he and his boss are doing in Iran.
No one’s putting us in danger. We’re putting the other guys in danger. That’s our job. So we’re not concerned about that. The only ones that need to be worried right now are Iranians that think they’re going to live.
There has been a lot of talk about the need for another Walter Cronkite to rise from the unmarked grave of network news and work his magic the way that Uncle Walter did over Vietnam. (Granted, it took seven years, 21,000 American and 1.5 million Vietnamese lives, and a term and a half of Richard damn Nixon for the magic to work, but hey…) Me, I don’t think what we need is a new Cronkite. I think what we need is a new Clark Clifford.
Clifford was a veteran Washington power broker, and in March 1968, as President Lyndon Johnson’s choice to replace Robert McNamara, Clifford became secretary of defence. Clifford took office in the aftermath of the catastrophic Tet invasion the previous January. Clifford was so independently influential that he didn’t care what all the brass hats and remaining New Frontiersmen around the president thought. And, by degrees, Clifford began to move the administration away from the decades of lies and deceit surrounding the war. As Time ’s Hugh Sidey wrote at the time:
The smooth lawyer was trying his greatest case. It was, said one who observed it, “the gutsiest performance I’ve ever seen or ever heard of.” For seven months the argument raged. Johnson said little, but he was listening. Clifford threw all his weight behind arguments that persuaded the president to order the partial suspension of bombing of North Vietnam on March 31 to get talks with Hanoi under way. Again, Clifford’s view held sway when bombing was halted altogether on Oct. 31 in an effort to rescue the negotiations from stalemate.
Convinced that Saigon had become the tail wagging the Washington dog, Clifford spoke out last month and again last week when he saw the negotiations heading for an interminable deadlock. There is an undeniable and heavy risk in Clifford’s position. He has no assurance that Hanoi really wants a settlement or that the enigmatic enemy would honour a troop-withdrawal agreement. In dismissing Saigon’s concern over protocol, moreover, he overlooks the fact that, as Henry Kissinger pointed out, the “choreography” of such negotiations “is almost as important as what is negotiated.” Still, he pressed his arguments with rare force.
History has told us that Clifford’s efforts came close to pushing LBJ into a settlement that autumn, only to have Nixon, that unutterable swine, sabotage the possibility of a settlement for his own political advantage.
Where’s the Clark Clifford of 2026, someone who’s brave enough and independent-minded enough to get a pliable, half-mad old man to change this doomed crusade before everything lies in ruins? Where’s the Republican who can work Clark Clifford’s magic, or does it even exist anymore?
