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The wheels are coming off the Trump chariot

By Jules Witcover - Syndicated Columnist | Jun 23, 2020

KRT US NEWS STORY SLUGGED: GERMOND KRT PHOTOGRAPH BY CHUCK KENNEDY (December 21) Baltimore Sun political Jules Witcover. Witcover is the long-time writing partner of Jack Germond, who announced his retirement, Thursday, December 21, 2000. (KRT) PL KD 2000 (Vert) (smd)

WASHINGTON — Less than five months until the 2020 presidential election, an epidemic of major political blows from various quarters has thrown Donald Trump into panic mode.

One surprising setback came from the Supreme Court he thought he had put in his pocket with his appointments. With Trump appointee Chief Justice John Roberts leading the way, a 5-4 decision has rejected his effort to kill DACA — the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects from deportation those who were brought to this country as children of undocumented immigrants. As DACA was a prize initiative of former President Barack Obama, discarding it has been a cornerstone of Trump’s anti-immigration crusade.

This followed two weeks of impassioned protests demanding racial justice, which followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. President Trump’s behavior in response to protests and looting were so extreme and chaotic that leading voices in the military and past and present White House notables expressed dissent and disgust.

And, on top of that crisis, the coronavirus pandemic continues to rage despite Trump’s blind insistence that the worst of it is over.

Now comes a tell-all book by former National Security Adviser John Bolton that shreds our infantile and crass president. The author offers numerous accounts of Trump’s words and deeds during Bolton’s 17 months inside the insane asylum. It’s too bad he is vomiting the details at this late date, rather than having done so in testimony before Congress when it would have made a difference.

Among the most disturbing and politically damaging testimony in the book, “The Room Where It Happened,” is Bolton’s allegation that Trump directly sought illegal help from Chinese President Xi Jinping to win his own reelection. Bolton writes that on one occasion when Xi complained to Trump about American critics of China, Trump “stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability to affect the ongoing campaigns, pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton went on: “He stressed the importance of farmers, and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome.”

Perhaps just as pertinent, or more so, in terms of the 2020 election are Bolton’s recollections of Trump’s efforts to obtain political dirt on prospective Democratic presidential rival Joe Biden from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, by withholding $391 million in military aid. Biden had been President Barack Obama’s point man in leading a crackdown on Ukrainian corruption. The funds eventually were released without Zelenskiy ever conducting a promised inquiry.

Bolton last year declined to testify before the House impeachment committee investigating charges against Trump of abuse of power, choosing to save his account for the lucrative tell-all book. Committee chairman Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California, has observed: “When Bolton was asked, he refused, and said he’d sue if subpoenaed. Instead, he saved it for a book. Bolton may be an author, but he’s no patriot.”

In any event, all this latest turmoil surrounding the sitting president finds him lashing out in sarcastic and bullying tweets, as he strives to come out of the virus-imposed cocoon that so far has reduced the campaign to dueling digital substitutions for conventional large rallies.

Trump not surprisingly wishes away the guardrails, while Biden more tentatively dips his toe into the combative election waters, while observing the basic precautions of the public health experts. But the public-opinion polls the embattled president alternately boasts about, castigates or just lies about, increasing haunt him.

Some presidential candidates, when confronted with political or real-life consternation, rise to the occasion by presenting the best of what they have to offer voters. In the case of Donald Trump, it appears increasingly to bring out the worst. Such is a political figure whose essence is based on self-survival rather than on survival of the democratic process that unhappily has fallen to him to preserve.

Jules Witcover’s latest book is “The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power,” published by Smithsonian Books. You can respond to this column at juleswitcovercomcast.net.

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