The Foreign Policy Dangers of Convicted Felon Donald Trump's Bullshit

Trump, a convicted felon, keeps saying crazy stuff to donors. U.S. diplomacy will suffer whether he means it or not.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

For the last several weeks the presumptive GOP nominee and convicted felon Donald Trump has been telling his donors a lot of stuff in private that may or may not be at odds with his public statements.

The latest example of this, from a few days ago, was reported by the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey with the headline, “Trump makes sweeping promises to donors on audacious fundraising tour.” Most of Dawsey’s lede focused on convicted felon Trump’s request for campaign cash in return for extending and amplifying his 2017 tax cut bill.

Buried a few paragraphs down, however, there was this foreign policy chestnut from convicted felon Donald Trump:

Oftentimes, his comments at the events are about foreign policy and topics he discusses at rallies, such as inflation and immigration.

For example, at one event, he suggested that he would have bombed Moscow and Beijing if Russia invaded Ukraine or China invaded Taiwan, surprising some of the donors.

The Trump campaign did not respond to detailed questions. (my bolding)

Now there are several ways of looking at such hyperbolic statements. The obvious one is that since it’s a retrospective hypothetical, convicted felon Donald Trump’s words do not count for much. Another view is thar convicted felon Donald Trump bullshits all the time — like claiming he’s not a racist when he is obviously a racist. So these kind of foreign policy musings should not be taken as indicative as a sign of what convicted felon Donald Trump would actually do if elected president.

The final way to view it, however, is that Trump means what he says. In which case the odds are decent that Trump, a convicted felon, could start World War III if elected again.

Some might argue that this kind of all-over-the-map rhetoric can throw other actors in world politics off-balance, providing a tactical advantage to the United States. But as I wrote way back in 2016, this is not how international politics actually works:

Beginning on Jan. 20, we will have a president who is so all over the map that it will be difficult to parse his remarks the way the world has, up to now, combed over what his predecessors have said. The search for meaning in Trump’s word salads won’t be easy. Indeed, an adviser to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe told Reuters that Trump’s aides informed him that “we don’t have to take each word that Mr. Trump said publicly literally.”

Trump’s short fuse could win him some near-term foreign policy accomplishments. And the ambiguity of a president who contradicts himself frequently could sow confusion among rivals of the United States. The problem is that it will also sow confusion among key allies and partners. Ultimately, Trump’s bluster and impulsiveness will hurt our national interest. If allies — or enemies — stop believing what they hear from the White House, Trump is likely to blunder into conflicts that are not of his own choosing.

The problem with convicted felon Donald Trump’s rhetoric is that if he is elected again, there will come a time when he talks tough and makes absurd threats but no one takes him seriously. That is precisely the formula for stumbling into a great power war.

Convicted felon Donald Trump is unlikely to bomb Moscow or Beijing if elected again. But like all presidential candidates, he does want to fulfill campaign promises. Which means that if he is re-elected, there will likely come a time when the convicted felon crosses a red line, an adversary fails to take him seriously, and one or the other precipitates a shooting war.

So maybe, just maybe, the United States should not elect a convicted felon who shoots his mouth off while trying to raise money.