Is Trump Just Doing the Crazy Things Republicans Always Promised?: Podcast
From ripping families apart to nominating a torture-enabler as CIA director, the administration is calling the GOP's bluff, Reason editors argue.

As Elizabeth Nolan Brown noted this morning, the Trump administration officially opened the new U.S. embassy to Israel today in Jerusalem, amid the horrific gunning down of scores of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers at the border in Gaza. "Like Lucy and the football," Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler had written back in 2012, "the pledge to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem is a campaign promise that is never fulfilled." But that was before the rise of Donald Trump.
On today's Reason Podcast, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman and yours truly drill down into policy areas where Trump has actually gone through with some of the insincere promises Republicans have long made to their voters, starting with the harsh policy announced last week to use family separation—ripping children from their parents—as a conscious deterrent to illegal immigration and in-person asylum applications. Other subjects covered include the Gina Haspel confirmation process, the re-litigation of torture, Trump's attempted tamping down of drug prices, and some apologetics for pre-2008 Reason headlines.
Audio production by Ian Keyser.
Relevant links from the show:
"Trump Calls the Congressional GOP's Bluff," by Matt Welch
"Trump's Official Policy: If You Cross the Border, We'll Kidnap Your Children," by Jacob Sullum
"Undocumented Immigrants Make America Safer," by Steve Chapman
"Do Family Values Stop at the Rio Grande for Conservatives?" by Shikha Dalmia
"Trump's Tribal Immigration Policies Hit a Wall of Facts," by A. Barton Hinkle
"Gina Haspel, Susan Collins, and the Folly of the 'Good Soldier' Defense of Torture," by Eric Boehm
"Gina Haspel's Confirmation Hearing Is a Reckoning for America's Use of Torture During the War on Terror," by Eric Boehm
"Under Trump, Republicans Have Become the Party of No Ideas," by Peter Suderman
"President Trump: Competition Is the Solution to High Drug Prices," by Ronald Bailey
"'All Gov't Support of Higher Ed Should Be Abolished': Live Debate in NYC, 5/14," by Nick Gillespie
"Reason at FEEcon 2018, June 7-9 in Atlanta!" by Nick Gillespie
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The whole Jerusalem embassy is a long term US policy started under Clinton and a statement of reality, Israel has its capital in Jerusalem.
Sorry if you find it crazy.
I do find it funny how people can be mad at Trump lying AND with him keeping campaign promises.
Some people are capable of entertaining two distinct non-contradictory thoughts. We know you only laugh because it's something you wish you could do.
That's about as clear an admission from Hamas as you will ever get as to the role their subjects are expected to play here.
Cannon fodder?
Yup.
So wouldn't that be an act of War? This isn't East/West Germany. The people on the other side of the fence don't want you there. Ten thousand people is an invasionary force.
Maybe they're just looking for landscaping jobs.
I'm sure Israel has plenty of ammo.
Palestinians think it's their capital too.
Crazy is being surprised by the next Muslim terrorist attack.
Is there any reason it can't be both capital of Israel and capital of a Palestinian state?
I honestly don't get the knicker-twisting going on here, other than the mutual anti-semitism of Jews and Arabs.
First step is get rid of the ultra-rightwingers running things (Bibi there and Sean Hannity here). They just want to poke Muslims with a stick.
Muslims don't need a stick to get stirred up. The mere existence of non-Muslims is enough.
Especially when the non-Muslims keep bombing their houses.
Which only happens when they bomb other people's houses.
While I'm not saying the MIddle East was ever peaceful, Islam pretty much started the mess when Mo's Uncle rolled out of Saudi Arabia conquering everything and killing people if they didn't convert.
Not to mention that Israel has faced invasion and acts of war from the Muslim nations of the Middle East since its inception. Which happened to be a mere 4 years after the end of a campaign which sought to eradicate all Jews. I can't imagine why Israel would react to all acts of aggression from its (entirely Muslim) neighbors as threats to its very existence.
Israel is entitled to act as it wishes.
I do not want to subsidize Israel's immoral right-wing belligerence, however, and I expect American support for Israel to collapse, within my lifetime, roughly as quickly as opposition to same-sex marriage capsized.
Oh GOD don't tell me you expect to live for another fifty years! JESUS, NO!
"I can't imagine why Israel would react to all acts of aggression from its (entirely Muslim) neighbors as threats to its very existence."
It should be pointed out that those countries used to have healthy populations of other religions. I wonder what happened?
Don't be stupid, Israel has legitimate ultra-rightwingers and Bibi isn't one of them.
How many Muslims are in the Israeli Knesset?
How many Jews hold office in Egypt?
Then whenever they can get their shit together enough to have an actual state, we can have an embassy for them where they want.
But we do not and should not base our policies on what they want.
Germans thought Alsace-Lorraine and Prussia were part of their country, then they lost a couple wars, like the Arabs in Palestine.
I guess it being one of the oldest and most religiously significant cities in the world complicates things a bit.
Not really. I wasn't complicated when the original Hebrews, Syrians, Greeks, Romans, or Turks ran the place. Having a permanent victim camp next door complicates it. That's why Jordan and Egypt will never attack Israel again - after the war Israel would dump those people on them and force them to accept better borders.
Only if you let it.
(Oldest cities in the world?
Please. There are seven longer-inhabited ones in the Middle East alone.
It wasn't important for anyone but the Jews during the Roman era, for instance; the Romans didn't think it was worth making the provincial capital.
Christians honestly don't care about it all that much, now that the whole Crusades thing wore itself out.
The Muslims only care because Mohammed couldn't make up his mind about the Jews being awesome or awful and tried to piggyback on them and the Christians for a while.)
Mohammed couldn't decide about Jerusalem and the Jews - but he did make the ultimate dick move of building a mosque right on top of the Old Temple.
Thank you.
The temple mount is the most holy site to the Jews.
Al Aqsa mosque is the "3rd" holiest site to Muslims.
The situation there is ridiculous.
Why aren't progressives screaming about the unfairness of it?
In fairness, the Old Temple had been destroyed by the Romans over 500 years before. They thought of themselves as rebuilding it, not squashing it.
Seriously? He knew the Jews better than that - they had laughed him out of town when tried to be a Jewish prophet - so he came back with an army and killed them. He knew dann well what he was doing.
You're thinking of Jesus - Mo was a few centuries after there was any point trying to be a Jewish prophet.
I'm pretty sure Jesus wasn't "laughed" out of town.
Christians honestly don't care about it all that much
WTF?
They read about that city and the region every fucking day.
Yeah, seriously, my only hope of making a pilgrimage to a lot of holy spots in the Middle East is Israel being in control of them. I could get murdered otherwise.
A lot of these Middle Eastern countries have active genocides going on against Christians. Not that the US media cover that much.
Jerusalem is really only important to the Jews.
That it's important to other religions is because they borrowed from and wanted to overwrite Judaism.
What if some new religious came along in Yemen and wanted Mecca to be its capital? Do you think Muslims (and Saudi Arabia) would go along with that? Or even Medina?
Has no one thought to deploy this stunning logic and end Middle East turmoil once and for all. Jared, come here!
Palestinians always assumed we were giving mere lip service to a two-state solution. Now with this purely symbolic and otherwise pointless act, we've firmly taken sides. The addition of vile evangelical megachurch assholes at the occasion was a nice touch.
John Bolton is so hard right now.
Wars have a tendency to drag on until one side gives up.
Aren't embassies traditionally in the capital of countries to be near the government?
Christians or Muslims who think that Jerusalem as a modern place are simply idolaters. The only religion for whom the place itself has any actual significance is Jews and they can have it; Jerusalem is a dump.
Re: damikesc,
It is crazy. Clinton didn't go through it, nor did Bush fis nor Barack I "The Handsome" because it was crazy shit. Placing an embassy in Jerusalem guarantees a perpetual conflict between the Middle East and the West.
You mean you can't be mad at his prevarications and his crazy promises? Most are mad at him because he IS dishonest and because he's keeping promises meant only to garner flattery, something he's very susceptible to.
As opposed to what? Hardly been peaceful.
I happen to think that darker-skinned folks are capable of behaving like civilized people. This is not a common belief amongst people who lean more towards the Left.
So, he's like Obama?
You'd think Reason would be blowing him by now.
You know, some people just don't get that the kernel of Islam is a system for conquest - the religion component was evil genius territory that mohammed used to fund his next campaign as he didn't have the best army ever seen in history, which he knew. The conflict being perpetual is actually not avoidable: if the entire world became muslim tomorrow, what would they do? Waging "jihad" against a fellow muslim is clearly impeachable by their own doctrines, and people will be dealt with. An islamic world is then left with... nothing but a set of scales, and the feathers of their good deeds will never meet the balance against their sins. That leaves only agitation, with no relief in sight - civil wars could never be extinguished, as their text teaches only jihad is guaranteed salvation... but where to turn when there are no more infidels?
But don't expect the Oprahfied amongst us to grasp that, or to interchange 'cleric' with 'scribes' in evaluating something most of us have heard before: "...beware the scribes". They should though - most of Islamic law was built in the wake of Mohammed's death, not before.
I welcome this move to a Jerusalem embassy, largely because I believe it accelerates movement toward freeing Americans of the severe moral, financial, and political costs of providing military, political, and economic skirts for Israel to hide its right-wing belligerence behind.
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Wow, I had no idea that my comments were so influential around here! I feel almost as if I should be made an honorary staffer or something.
Since I have so much clout and power, let me give my good Reason fellows some more information so that they're better informed and not taken completely by surprise down the line: the spy and human informant that Barack Obama placed inside the Trump campaign (possibly even with the help of some establishment republicans) was probably a man named Stefan Halper who has deep connections to both the CIA and MI6.
"nominating a torture-enabler as CIA director"
FYI- Brennan was in the last administration.
And McCain wholeheartedly backed him.
From his white nationalist immigration policies to his dangerous rhetoric about North Korea, Drumpf is a grave threat to the entire planet. I fear that "doing the crazy things Republicans always promised" understates the seriousness of the situation. It would be more accurate to say Drumpf is doing what the NAZIS did last century. The United States is currently a terrifying mashup of Nazi Germany and Gilead. (That's a reference to The Handmaid's Tale, for those of you who aren't watching the most important show on TV.)
If only the Republican Party was still controlled by its decent, sane faction. People like John McCain and David Frum.
The Nazis embraced Islam, created several Waffen SS Muslim Divisions, and (briefly) united Europe into a socialist paradise.
D-
Come on - the McCain reference was solid
I think it's solid parody work.
Again with the Nazis.
Trump isn't being a Nazi, because they actually had long-range plans. He's being a Republican. And, what's worse, he's being Trump. It's the combination of the two that's being the problem. And that means that Trump's actions are informed by the fact that he genuinely can't fathom the difference between a base-rousing stump speech and actual diplomatic policy.
It's been recorded that both Reagan and Thatcher (or their administrations) actually wanted to keep the Soviet Union from collapsing. It was well understood that it could lead to far worse problems in the near-long term, and could have been far worse than it actually was. But that's diplomacy. It's easy to stand at a podium and shout "Bomb the Commies! Woooo!" but hard to foresee and manage the consequences.
And it's the exact same situation here. It's very possible that Trump and his circle genuinely can't grasp that there are going to be long-term consequences that someone is going to have to pay for (in gold and in blood) down the line.
Whatever it is in life, always ask "...and then what?"
Works for diplomacy, marriage, painting a house, club selection off the tee - you name it. Does Trump ask this? It doesn't seem like it, yet... he got Kim Jong Un to feel comfortable about walking across his border [with Chinese motivation I suspect]. He got Merkel to come visit despite enormous differences over Iran. He's either the luckiest guy on the planet, or the best poker player the world stage has seen. He doesn't typecast well compared to run of the mill pols, and maybe thats part of how he gets things done despite both parties trying to shove him out and 90% negative media coverage. If he got the same tenor media coverage Obama did, his approval numbers would probably be in the low 60's right now.
I saw somebody commenting elsewhere that Trump probably has an advantage in dealing with your average dictator, compared to normal politicians, due to having to deal so long with mob controlled building trades. He's used to the type.
"And that means that Trump's actions are informed by the fact that he genuinely can't fathom the difference between a base-rousing stump speech and actual diplomatic policy."
And that's good. Because one of the most corrosive things for a democracy is that base rousing stump speeches don't translate into actual policy after the guy who gave them gets elected.
Seriously, what good is democracy if speech before elections doesn't imply action after elections? If you can't tell what a candidate is going to do if elected from what they say before the election, democracy is just a sick joke.
So, salute Donald Trump: He campaigned on doing stuff, and then actually tries to do it! You might not like what he campaigned on, but the losers in elections seldom do like what the winner campaigned on.
FTFY.
Just look at the NSDAP party program and compare it to the Democrats.
"We didn't know how dreamy he was gonna be!"
I don't see the upside for the U.S. in recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital, but I see plenty of potential downside.
I think it's important to remember that if and when Iran develops nuclear weapons, the whole dynamic changes. In other words, we shouldn't expect Iran's proxies to avoid attacking us directly once Iran possesses a nuclear deterrent. Why would Hezbollah treat us the same way as they did before when Iran had no nuclear deterrent?
I don't even see the upside for Trump politically. It might help him with Southern evangelicals, but does anyone think Jews en mass are about to jump on the MAGA express. The critical mass of them don't seem to care where Republicans stand on any issue about Israel or even if the Democrats are on the side of the Palestinians.
I don't think that's about socialism or fear that Trump will become a populist dictator. I think it goes back through their experiences in eastern Europe, when the difference between the federal government pulling back and a pogrom could be hard to distinguish. Republicans running around with guns and a rebellious spirit towards the central government must sound like trouble to them.
Meanwhile, the left seems to throw Israel under the bus at every opportunity.
P.S. My loyalty to Israel only extends so far as I think our alliance is beneficial to the USA, but one thing the Zionists seem to be right about is the idea that Europe can't be depended on to protect Jews.
http://www.usnews.com/news/bes.....oss-europe
Einstein became a Zionist when we realized that he didn't get to pick his tribe, and the Germans wouldn't let him assimilate.
The Palestinians have gotten screwed to the extent that they are treated like shit by the Arab world. They can't assimilate either. They were kicked out of both "Palestine" and Jordan and have been forced into the role of pawn. That's what happens when you lose a war to both Israel and Jordan, but neither country was strong enough or heartless enough to kill you. They now serve as a zombie nation to distract the restless Arabs in the rest of the world. "We'll reform our society just as soon as we solve the Palestinian question." Right.
Suppose you had an ongoing feud with your neighbor. But every time you get in a fight with him, he beats you soundly. What could you do?
Well, you might build a kennel next to the property line, start raising rabid dogs in it, and just wait for them to dig under the fence.
The Palestinians are those rabid dogs, the expendable proxy soldiers for a war the Arabs don't dare wage directly. Pity them, if the Arabs ever make genuine peace with Israel, they'll be redundant, and what will happen to them?
I'm betting it won't be pretty. Because the Arabs know what the Palestinians are, and sure as hell don't want to invite them into their own homes.
"as I think our alliance is beneficial to the USA,"
Think again, Ken. There's no alliance between USA and Israel. NATO is an alliance and members help each other out when one gets into trouble. Israel is a Strategic Partner, something less than an alliance. Other Strategic Partners include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
I'm agnostic on lands that have been won and lost and won no matter religious or political value or otherwise. God does not give a shit where people pray as long as they pray. Sure if Mexico came into America and reclaimed lands would we let that stand maybe I don't know and i don't know if I care If southern California was lost to Mexico, it sort of already has been both in culture and politics and we are letting it happen. one is melding away and other is if it is taken violently.
"I'm agnostic on lands that have been won and lost and won no matter religious or political value or otherwise."
It's more than a question of land, it's about forced population transfers and ethnic cleansing. That's a question of people, and how they should be treated.
Yes, ethnic cleansing usually involves allowing the disfavored group to vote, hold seats in the parliament and serve in the military. Idiot.
"Yes, ethnic cleansing usually involves allowing the disfavored group to vote, hold seats in the parliament and serve in the military."
Ethnic cleansing can be a lot easier than that. Simply don't allow refugees to return to their homes. Even easier, dynamite their homes.
Considering there is a large Arab population inside Israel proper, who has complete freedom of movement, and have not been expelled, it is hardly ethinic cleansing. Again, actual facts dispute your assertion.
There are large numbers of people, like those in Gaza, who are denied the right to return to their homes, for the simple reason they are not Jews. If the term 'ethnic cleansing' troubles you, why not suggest another name for it?
I think time plays an important factor too. After about a 50 years, you just straight up lose claim to a territory. The people actually being born on that land have more claim to it than some third generation born elsewhere person.
I think time plays an important factor too. After about a 50 years, you just straight up lose claim to a territory. The people actually being born on that land have more claim to it than some third generation born elsewhere person.
"After about a 50 years, you just straight up lose claim to a territory. The people actually being born on that land have more claim to it than some third generation born elsewhere person."
Woody Allen has just as much claim to Israeli citizenship as Netanyahoo does.
And? Your point is what?
Take your time and see if you can figure it out for yourself.
Wow, what a wonderful rebuttal. So you have no counterargument, just blowing stuff out your ass. Okay, glad we established that.
"Wow, what a wonderful rebuttal. "
Thanks. It's my standard rebuttal to those who pester me with questions I figure they know the answer to all along anyway.
"Is Trump Just Doing the Crazy Things Republicans Always Promised?"
Yes, pretty much. From my own libertarian point of view Trump has been a mixed bag with more bad than good. From the point of view of GOP base/Tea Party Republicans, he's been a great President.
Trump has enforced the Republican platform (including stuff copied from the 2012 Prohibition Party platform) quite literally. The good news is that the Prohibition Party was in 2016 infiltrated by Ecological National Socialists and now shrieks about global warming pseudoscience and begs for energy subsidies as earnestly as it carpet-bites over the Libertarian planks the supreme Court copied into Roe v. Wade and the gay marriage abomination against poor little God. Of course America's Oldest Third Party still wants men with guns to shoot people over beer and plant leaves and bring back Comstock laws. That Prohibitionists are now the lunatic fringe and the LP the respectable alternative is a BIG win for our spoiler votes.
But think of how many countless Palestinians we protected from work emails on a private server.
Since I actually read platforms AND vote, the only thing Trump did that surprised me was win. Ruefully rereading I noticed the Dems promised to make electricity as available, safe and affordable as crystal meth, real freon or mustard gas. This alliance with foreign interests eager to economically cripple These States is the same thing as an attempt to increase the death rate. In other words, any coercive attack on generating capacity is the deliberate creation of a sizeable health hazard. That the thing was based entirely on lies (thermometer records show NO global warming in 2 decades or 10 decades) and superstition indicates we'd be even worse off with that different bunch of superstitious mystics drawing paychecks.
So the main problem is unlike other politicians Trump is actually going through with hair campaign promises? So it would be better that he lied about his stance?
Welch is a fucking moron. He has no idea why these things are wrong. But he knows he expected to object to them. So he just calls them crazy. It is just pathetic. Welch is incapable of even understanding much less explaining his criticisms of Trump.
What is this silly leftist-oriented essay doing in Reason?
"the horrific gunning down of scores of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers at the border in Gaza."
Give me a break. We all saw what happened the other day when Iran fired missiles into Israel.
Israel launch an attack which pound the hell out of Iranian targets in Syria.
All that happening today is a mob of Palestinian irregulars attacked Israeli border positions and
a few of the rioting mob got shot by Israelis defending themselves and their country. It is also a
fair bet that the Palestinian leaders wished for exactly that outcome. Shoot some more Israel.
Nobody cares.
"Shoot some more Israel. Nobody cares."
People don't care about shooting. Killing unarmed demonstrators, though, is a something people care about.
But this is just armed demonstrators using human shields, not unarmed demonstrators.
Are you parroting FOX or CNN? Either way it's refreshing to see libertarians cheering on a massacre for a change.
No, I'm observing facts. It wasn't an unarmed demonstration, it was an armed attack on the border using human shields. I've seen some of the video, you can easily observe that many of the attackers were armed.
SOP for Hamas. Use human shields while attacking, and then claim they were injured in an unprovoked attack. Only people who are pathologically hostile to Israel fall for that.
"I've seen some of the video, you can easily observe that many of the attackers were armed."
I'm not sure what video you're referring to. Are you sure it was video of the recent massacre at Gaza? Those demonstrators who were shot to death were shot by Israeli security forces, and they were unarmed.
"Use human shields while attacking"
FOX or CNN? No need to be ashamed.
To hell with whatever evolution of the PLO is raising hell and rioting. Why? Because when Yassir Arafat was offered everthing he'd ever asked for plus the kitchen sink on Clintons watch, he pushed the deal back across the table and went home. These are the people raising their boys with such a degree of agitation by teaching hate from first grade on, that instead of getting into sports or girls as a teenager, they train to build bombs and plan ways to kill their neighbors. The people shot... were killed by their parents long ago because they can't live and let live.
Well I do think that Trump has revealed what the Republican base really is - not so much for free markets or limited government or individual liberty, but really just flag-waving nationalism. And quite frankly I think that's what it has been all along.
He makes very weird things. I hope that his future doings do not break an essay writer career for me. Sometimes I do not understand what he tries to do.