White House Report Card: Turk-Kurd pause in conflict and a bone to Trump’s Doral club

And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expecting impeachment and a Senate trial by Christmas.

John Zogby
Grade F

This week finds President Trump under the bus, thrown there by current and former members of his own administration.

It also finds him heralding a ceasefire by Turkey for an invasion that should have never happened and only happened because of his ineptitude. The five-day ceasefire will only end once the Kurds abandon their autonomous zone to Turkey. In a low point for diplomatic relations, the president insulted both the president of Turkey in a letter that could have been written by a middle school bully — and at the same time, he continued to insult the Kurds who have lost 11,000 people fighting with the United States in Syria.

Trump will go into some book of records for double-crossing two sides in a battle — both sides, incidentally, being U.S. allies.

The White House announced late this week that Trump will host the next meeting of the G-7 at the Trump National Doral Miami club, and now 51% of Americans support his removal from office. A stunning week.

Jed Babbin
Grade D-

It was another politically raucous week for President Trump after Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo negotiated an already-failing ceasefire agreement with Turkey regarding the Kurds in northeastern Syria, a meeting with congressional leaders that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi walked out of, and the announcement that the next G-7 summit would be held at the Trump Doral Resort which created the appearance of impropriety.

On Thursday, meeting with Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Pence and Pompeo negotiated an agreement in which the Turks were supposed to abide by a ceasefire with the Kurds to retreat from a “safe zone” to be occupied by Turkish troops, in exchange for which, Trump promised to relieve the economic sanctions he imposed on Turkey. It also required the Kurds to disarm themselves, which would be a suicidal act. Nevertheless, some fighting continued, and Erdoğan has threatened to resume full-scale war against the Kurds after the 120-hour ceasefire ends. In short, it’s a lousy deal.

In a midweek meeting with congressional leaders, Trump and Pelosi exchanged insults — he called her a “third-rate politician” and she reportedly said that with him, all roads lead to Russian President Vladimir Putin. And despite Republican objections, the impeachment investigation, held entirely in secret, is proceeding quickly.

On Thursday, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney addressed Ukraine in remarks hugely misconstrued by the Democrats and the press. Mulvaney said that aid to nations was often withheld to leverage their cooperation on different matters and that this was done regarding aid to the Ukraine in respect to getting their cooperation in investigating the spy campaign against Trump in the 2016 election. There is a Clinton-era treaty compelling the U.S. and Ukraine to cooperate with each other in investigating crimes which makes Trump’s request entirely legal and proper.

The only reason why Trump could have wanted to offer the Doral resort for the G-7 was to get the Democrats and their press pals in an uproar, and in that, he succeeded. Trump’s resort is reportedly going to host the event at cost. That will draw all sorts of audits that will reveal no impropriety, but the appearance of impropriety is strong enough to earn Trump strong criticism from a lot of sources. It stinks, but there’s almost certainly no illegal or impeachable conduct in it.

John Zogby is the founder of the Zogby Poll and senior partner at John Zogby Strategies. His latest book is We Are Many, We Are One: Neo-Tribes and Tribal Analytics in 21st Century America. Follow him on Twitter @TheJohnZogby

Jed Babbin is a Washington Examiner contributor and former deputy undersecretary of defense in the administration of former President George H.W. Bush. Follow him on Twitter @jedbabbin