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Asks if Trump is stupid or nefarious
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Editor, Manteca Bulletin,
That putrid swamp we all know as the current Trump Administration seems to leak something foul smelling almost on a daily basis. Since I still have not seen one thing produced by this Administration that actually benefits Middle America, I am almost forced to lump them all into one basket but that would not totally explain their true worth or intent. That is until I read a Foreign Affairs article by Gideon Rose.
Rose writes, “Every administration spins, fights with the press and the bureaucracy, pushes its own agenda, and tries to evade intrusive oversight. But ordinary White Houses do not repeatedly lie, declare war on mainstream media institutions, pursue radical goals while disdaining professional input, and refused to accept independent scrutiny. How seriously you take these behaviors depends on how you assess the motivation behind them, generating a game some have taken to calling ‘stupid or nefarious?’” Stupid or nefarious, fits everything seeping out of that swamp nicely, doesn’t it?
The litany of recent mistakes the Trump organization has made, from when Trump conflated the special election in Georgia with a snap election in the UK to when he congratulated Turkish President Tayyip Erdoan for passing a “dictatorship referendum.” Stupid or nefarious? And those are just recent as they are preceded by almost countless other examples.
Now let’s just take the latest blunder or seemingly so when Trump announced he was sending an “Armada” to the Sea of Japan to send a message to the current North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un whom Trump called “this gentleman”. That was nice, but he also referred to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il as the same guy when he stated that “this gentleman” has fooled us for years, since way before Bill Clinton. It would be nice if Trump actually knew who he wants to start a freaking nuclear War with, much like when he said we had launched missiles to Iraq instead of Syria.
The “armada” trump referred to was an Aircraft Carrier Strike Group. Apparently Trump thinks he is King of Spain in the 15th century and commands the likes of the Spanish Armada, who knows.
Anyway, Trump announced this military action, then it was verified by the Administration Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, the National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster and Defense Secretary James Maddis. Sounds like a good solid military maneuver, right? Well it would be if it were true but what we now find out is that Strike Group was never on its way to the Sea of Japan, it fact it was thousands of miles away headed in the opposite direction towards Australia to take part in some Naval maneuvers in the region.  I suppose that was supposed to scare the hell out of crazier than Trump, Kim Jong-un (Part 3 of “This Gentleman”) or maybe send a message to the rest of the world, who knows that either. Now this Keystone Cops episode would be funny if it didn’t involve the possible start of a nuke war with Crazy Kim. Stupid or nefarious?
I don’t know about you but trying to figure out if everything Trump Tweets or brags about on a daily basis is stupid or nefarious, is starting to worry me. Not because it is stupid or nefarious but why the media and the republican leadership seems to treat all this lunacy as normal.

Larry Baca
Manteca