In the “fire and fury” phase of Donald Trump’s presidency, everyone worried that he’d impulsively start a war with North Korea.

The worry should have been that he’d, almost on a whim, step across the Korean DMZ in a chummy photo-op with Kim Jong-un.

Richard Nixon famously had his “madman” theory of bringing our adversaries to heel by impressing on them his bellicose unpredictability. They’d better talk, otherwise the crazed anti-communist Nixon might nuke somebody.

It’s easy to see the inherent appeal of this theory to Trump, who has cited it in congratulating himself for avoiding war with North Korea. But the president, despite the occasional over-the-top threat, is not a natural madman in this Nixonian sense. He’s not a mad bomber; he’s the mad negotiator.

Does a South Korean delegation have an offer from Kim Jong-un to negotiate directly, with little or no preparation and fuzzy goals? By all means, let’s accept it, and make the meeting a captivating show. Is U.S. envoy Zalmay Khalilzad nearing a deal with the Taliban? Let’s get leaders of the insurgency to the storied retreat of U.S. presidents, Camp David. Will Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani both be at the upcoming U.N. General Assembly meeting? Let’s talk.

Trump has taken the old Barack Obama statement from a 2008 debate that he’d be willing to meet without precondition with the leaders of rogue states and made it an animating principle of his foreign policy.

This is why the Russian conspiracy theorists have always been off the mark. They’ve long believed — and still can’t shake the sense — that Vladimir Putin “must have something” on Trump to account for the president’s eagerness to come to some sort of unspecified arrangement with him. By this reasoning the Taliban, Kim Jong-un, President Xi, and Rouhani all must have something on Trump, too.

Trump sees the best in even the world’s most dismal actors because he sees them, no matter how hostile or bloodstained, as potential negotiating partners. Indeed, the more hostile and bloodstained they are, the more alluring they appear — because any deal would be ever more epic and validating of Trump’s image as the ultimate deal-maker.

Trump is often interpreted in Jacksonian terms, and rightly so. And yet he goes well beyond a traditional Jacksonian’s instinct to leave the world alone until, when a threat emerges, he feels compelled to pound it into sand. He’s a Jacksonian as real estate developer; he doesn’t want to leave the world alone — or pound it into sand — so much as have attention-getting ribbon-cutting ceremonies after audacious deals that prove the doubters wrong.

The M.O. of a publicity-conscious real estate guy is once you’ve cut the deal, even if it isn’t really the best one ever, you insist it is. Your building is almost sold out, rich and famous people are buying there, the prices are above market rates, etc. This is what is known as puffery, and Kim Jong-un has been the beneficiary of it.

Even though Kim’s missile program continues apace, and the prospect of his denuclearizing is as distant as ever, Trump still insists that they are great friends.

From one point of view, Trump is an exaggerated version of the mistake many U.S. presidents tend to make. Because getting elected president means by definition that they have better-than-average persuasive skills, presidents often have an outsized view of their own ability to personally sway other leaders.

Obviously, Trump takes it to another level. The problem with his worldview is that, counter to its supposed hard-bitten realism, it depends on the idea that ultimately, yes, we can all get along, assuming the right deal-maker is in the Oval Office.

But no tool of foreign policy, including diplomacy, should be deployed indiscriminately and thoughtlessly. Some hands aren’t worth shaking, some ribbons not worth cutting.

© 2019 by King Features Syndicate

The Trump administration on Thursday released $250 million in military aid to Ukraine, which the White House had delayed despite bipartisan criticism that the funds were needed to combat Russian aggression.

“The Departments of State and Defense are proceeding with the obligation of all military and security assistance funding to Ukraine,” the administration said. “The Administration supports Ukraine’s efforts of reform and self-defense, and these funds will advance Ukrainian efforts toward those ends.”

Ukraine severely needs the U.S. aid as it fights Moscow-backed separatists to prevent further Russian encroachments after the Kremlin annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014.

Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee also said during debate on a $695 billion defense-funding bill that the White House had released the aid Wednesday evening. The move came just before the committee was preparing to chastise the administration over holding up the funds. Members of Congress from both parties, including Senator Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.), a frequent Trump ally, were set to support an amendment to the spending bill freezing $5 billion of the Defense Department’s administrative money if the White House failed to release the Ukraine aid.

“We support Ukraine. Period. End of discussion,” said Republican senator John Kennedy of Louisiana.

The administration has been reviewing military aid to Ukraine as part of President Trump’s desire to cut foreign aid, exacerbating criticism that Trump is too sympathetic to Russian president Vladimir Putin.

To a certain kind of Rachel Maddow viewer, there are few more titillating preludes to a news segment than the one she delivered Monday: “If you have not seen it yet, you are going to want to sit down.”

Maddow’s story began, as many of her stories do, with President Trump, this time focused on his hotel in Scotland. The Turnberry Resort, a Trump golf hotel, is located some 50 miles south of Glasgow. Not far from that resort is the charming, if small, Glasgow Prestwick Airport; with a population under 10,000, the town of Penwick is not exactly a tourist destination, and the town’s airport has teetered on the brink of financial insolvency for nearly a decade. Because Glasgow Prestwick Airport is relatively close to the Turnberry Resort, fiscal issues at the local airport would portend similar doom for the Trump hotel, which relies on potential customers who fly in and out of Prestwick.

Here, in Maddow’s telling, is the rub: The United States Air Force refueled one of their C-17 aircrafts at Prestwick Airport on a return flight from Kuwait this spring. Maddow insists that it would have been “much cheaper” to fuel up at a military base — a supposed fact that heightened her alarm about the propriety of the stop in the first place. If this seemingly strange choice in fuel station weren’t enough, the Air Force subsequently stayed overnight at the Trump-owned Turnberry Resort. Both of these actions, said Maddow, were highly unusual and enough to arouse suspicion of malfeasance. Indeed, it was proof that the “U.S. military is in on it now,” the “it” being the Trump administration’s “corruption” and violation of the emoluments clause. The event might even reveal endemic corruption in the armed forces and could serve as a broader indictment of “the U.S. military and its integrity.”

I’m glad I sat down.

Indicting “the U.S. military and its integrity” is a rather serious charge to levy against the nation’s most respected public institution, but Maddow doubled down, bringing on her show one of the co-authors of the initial story from Politico, Natasha Bertrand, who called Maddow’s summation of events “absolutely perfect.” But reporting from Byron York at the Washington Examiner has brought the “perfection,” and indeed, the basic accuracy of Maddow and Politico’s story, into question.

The Air Force replied to the Politico report by challenging several key assertions made by both Maddow and Politico. First, the Prestwick Airport was independently contracted by the Department of Defense, and both parties agreed to terms that would allow the department to refuel at “standardized prices” — precisely the going rate that Maddow scoffed would be available only at a military base. Next, the Air Force’s use of the airport adjacent to the Trump hotel does not appear to be a novel phenomenon meant, as the Politico article speculates, to “line the president’s pockets.” Instead, well before the president’s inauguration, records show that the Air Force had used the small airport 95 times in 2015 and 145 times in 2016. While the number of stops there has since increased — the Air Force reports stopping in Prestwick 259 times through August of this 2019 — it is not as though the location was unknown to the Air Force or the Department of Defense until the president roped them into a secretive money-funneling gambit. And there are strategic features that make the otherwise obscure airport in Prestwick a preferable location for refueling. From the Air Force’s statement:

Additionally, Air Mobility Command [AMC] issued a flight directive to mobility crews in June 2017 designed to increase efficiencies by standardizing routing locations, with Prestwick being among the top five locations recommended for reasons such as more favorable weather than nearby Shannon Airport, and less aircraft parking congestion than locations on the European continent that typically support AMC’s high priority airlift missions. By considering factors like these to save costs and increase operational efficiencies, Air Operations Center contingency planners have increasingly turned to Prestwick to develop route plans for lower priority contingency needs such as training, deploy/redeploy and Guard airlift missions.

York’s report at the Examiner examined documents sent by State Department inspector general Steve Linick to Congress, responding to members miffed by a presidential visit to the Turnberry Resort. The document cites lower relative costs at the Trump hotel, compared with other inns in the area. From York:

During the visit, Linick said, State rented three rooms at Turnberry for two nights. The total cost was $728. Citing invoices from the hotel, Linick said the room rate for the night was 95.06 pounds, or $121.40, per night. Linick said the State Department looked at other hotels, including the Blythswood Square Hotel in Glasgow, which charged 215 pounds per night; the Hilton Glasgow, which charged 249 pounds; the Hilton Glasgow Grosvenor at 229 pounds; the Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow at 185 pounds; and the Raddison Blu in Glasgow at 179 pounds per night. Other State Department employees detailed to the president’s trip stayed at some of those hotels.

As York observes, “at least on the president’s trip, Turnberry was a good deal.” The Air Force, which generally makes earnest attempts to be judicious in its use of taxpayer monies, likely made their lodging decision based on similar price realities.

None of this is to condone the prudence of staying at a Trump resort in such partisan and polarized times; York notes that “the publicity surrounding the new story appears to have made the Air Force nervous.” But it’s a stretch to insist that this is a coordinated Ponzi scheme to enrich the president, with the willing and eager help of the United States Air Force. Maddow finished the segment by insisting that “if this story were fiction, “you would walk out, because it’s too blunt.” It’s possible she was too clever by half.

Federal prosecutors in Washington have recommended that criminal charges be filed against Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director, and the Justice Department has rejected a last-ditch appeal by McCabe’s lawyers, according to a report on Thursday by Fox News. This clears the way for what appears to be McCabe’s imminent indictment.

Jesse Liu, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia (appointed by Trump), has reportedly decided that McCabe should be charged. The decision was based on a referral by the Justice Department’s inspector general (appointed by Obama), Michael Horowitz. In a comprehensive report last year, issued after a probe of a leak of investigative information to the media orchestrated by McCabe, Horowitz found that McCabe had misled investigators, including making false statements under oath. As we observed here when the IG’s report was released, the case laid out by Horowitz appears compelling.

The Fox report indicates that Liu signaled to McCabe’s lawyers that she was persuaded to file charges. McCabe’s lawyers then appealed that decision to Jeffrey Rosen, the deputy attorney general (DAG). At least one source told Fox that McCabe’s team received an email from the Justice Department, which states: “The Department rejected your appeal of the United States Attorney’s Office’s decision in this matter. Any further inquiries should be directed to the United States Attorney’s Office.”

In the Justice Department chain of command, U.S. attorneys (who are presidential appointees confirmed by the Senate) report to the DAG. For most crimes, including false-statements offenses, the district U.S. attorney does not need authorization from the Justice Department to file charges. Nevertheless, in light of the facts that McCabe was a high-ranking Justice Department official (the FBI is part of DOJ) and that the potential charges stem from a Justice Department IG investigation, it makes sense that the district’s chief prosecutor would stay her hand to allow McCabe the opportunity to appeal to the Justice Department.

McCabe has indicated that, if charged, he would claim that the Justice Department was indicting him because of pressure from the White House. President Trump has been an unrestrained critic of McCabe, accusing him of rampant corruption.

There are reasons for the Justice Department to be concerned that the president’s public drumbeat would redound to McCabe’s benefit. An indictment would likely lead to a jury trial in Washington, where the president is unpopular.

Given those circumstances, though, the facts of the case against McCabe are attractive for prosecutors. For one thing, these facts are unrelated to Trump. While McCabe was among the principal investigators in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation, his leak did not involve that probe. Rather, he leaked the existence of the FBI’s Clinton Foundation investigation. Even in congressional testimony, the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, had tried to keep the existence of that investigation confidential (as the FBI customarily does with investigations). Yet McCabe orchestrated the leak, apparently for personal reasons — viz., to refute the suggestion that he and the FBI were in the tank for Clinton.

Moreover, according to the IG, McCabe at one point dressed down the FBI’s chiefs in New York and Washington, as if their field offices were responsible for the leak. That is, he knew that he himself was the culprit, yet he tried to shift suspicion and blame to innocent agents. If proved, that is the kind of fact that would not endear McCabe to a jury. It would also make it hard for him to portray himself as a fundamentally honest guy who would never deceive other FBI agents.

McCabe’s exhaustion of the opportunity to appeal to the Justice Department would suggest that his indictment is imminent. Meanwhile, the IG continues to examine alleged investigative abuses in connection with the Trump-Russia probe, and a Justice Department prosecutor, Connecticut U.S. attorney John Durham, is also investigating the origins and conduct of that probe. Consequently, McCabe will remain under the microscope.

President Trump on Monday denied knowledge of an Air Force crew’s stay at his luxury resort in Scotland and added that he was not involved in Vice President Mike Pence’s stay at a Trump resort in Ireland, days after House Democrats opened a probe into government spending at Trump properties.

I know nothing about an Air Force plane landing at an airport (which I do not own and have nothing to do with) near Turnberry Resort (which I do own) in Scotland, and filling up with fuel, with the crew staying overnight at Turnberry (they have good taste!). NOTHING TO DO WITH ME

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2019

I had nothing to do with the decision of our great @VP Mike Pence to stay overnight at one of the Trump owned resorts in Doonbeg, Ireland. Mike’s family has lived in Doonbeg for many years, and he thought that during his very busy European visit, he would stop and see his family!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2019

An Air National Guard crew stopped at Trump’s Turnberry resort outside Glasgow, Scotland during a spring trip from the U.S. to Kuwait. Pence stayed at the Doonbeg resort last week, nearly 200 miles away from the official meetings in Dublin that were the purpose of his visit to the country. House Democrats then intensified their interest in President Trump’s alleged efforts to encourage government spending at his luxury resorts, requesting information on the matter in several letters released Friday.

The House Judiciary and Oversight Committees have asked for records regarding Pence’s stay at the Doonbeg resort as well as Trump’s suggestion that the 2020 G-7 summit be held at Trump National Doral Miami. The Committees said such overlap between the administration and the president’s businesses may be unconstitutional and noted that the matter is significant for lawmakers as they weigh whether to recommend impeachment for Trump.

Trump has also defended his suggestion of hosting word leaders at his Miami resort, noting, “it’s very importantly only five minutes from the airport.”

President Trump on Tuesday officially tapped Eugene Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, to be his administration’s next secretary of labor.

The president forecast his nomination of Scalia last month, just days after Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta resigned amid criticism of his kid-gloved handling of Florida prostitution charges against the late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

“Gene has led a life of great success in the legal and labor field and is highly respected not only as a lawyer, but as a lawyer with great experience working with labor and everyone else,” Trump wrote Tuesday in a pair of tweets announcing his decision. “He will be a great member of an Administration that has done more in the first 2 ½ years than perhaps any Administration in history!”

Scalia is a partner at corporate law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP, and was a top lawyer for George W. Bush’s Labor Department. His nomination has been targeted by organized labor and Democrats, who cite his long history of fighting unions and labor regulations.

“The rich and powerful have teamed up with the Republican party to push for measures at all levels of government designed to decimate unions and collective bargaining. Eugene Scalia is the latest example,” Senator Elizabeth Warren’s campaign said last month. “He’s opposed implementing financial reforms at every turn and has spent his entire career representing giant corporations and Wall Street over American workers.”

Scalia will appear before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for a confirmation hearing when Congress returns from its summer recess.

We are in Week 2 of the president of the United States and his communications director of six days feuding on Twitter and cable TV.

The Trump-Scaramucci smackdown has, at times, distracted from the Trump-Denmark fight, which has been eclipsed, in its turn, by the Trump-Omar/Tlaib battle that has morphed into a clash between Donald Trump and Jews who vote for Democrats.

This is only a schematic account of the past few days that leaves out minor, supplemental controversies over Trump retweeting a supporter calling him “the King of Israel” and Trump insulting his Federal Reserve chairman, among much else. 

Trump makes the hyperactive, voluble Teddy Roosevelt, whom H. G. Wells called “a big noise,” seem retiring by comparison. He makes the wrathful Andrew Jackson, who nearly blew up his administration over a tiff among the wives of his Cabinet members, look like a paragon of caution.

Trump reportedly told aides before taking office that they should consider each day an episode in a TV show. As it happens, Trump acts like he needs to produce enough programming to fill a 24-hour news network, with outrages, internal melodrama, legal fights, and endless plot twists that are, indisputably, ratings gold.

Obviously, the fundamentals will be most determinative of Trump’s fate in 2020. Is the economy still growing? Are we at peace? But the backdrop to all this will be the level of public tolerance for, or exhaustion with, Trump’s antics and provocations.

In other words, can Americans bear for the show to go on? The threat to Trump isn’t Trump Derangement Syndrome, an affliction of opponents who can’t really touch him. The threat is Trump Fatigue, a condition that could spread more broadly and make swing voters harder to reach.

Never before has the late Andrew Breitbart’s axiom that “politics is downstream of culture” seemed more apt. The culture of celebrity, reality television, cable-TV food fights, and Twitter now defines national politics at its highest level.

The latest spats are characteristic of the Trump era. The fight with Anthony Scaramucci has the performative aspect you’d expect of two showmen. One is the master, a former reality TV show host who cashed in his notoriety for the presidency. The other is an up-and-comer, who made the most of notoriety gained by brief proximity to the master, including an appearance on a reality TV show himself.

The Greenland flap is classic, too. It’s amusing, like a storyline from a political spoof. Trump’s enemies don’t understand how entertaining his fans find this kind of thing. Then, somehow, it becomes a real diplomatic incident, with a presidential trip to Denmark canceled (for now). 

Finally, the fight over Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib’s trip to Israel implicates the cluster of real issues that Trump’s presidency has brought to the fore — including national identity — but in a highly symbolic manner. It wouldn’t have mattered much substantively whether Omar or Tlaib had gone on the trip or not.

What all these controversies have in common is that they fill the hours while nothing much really happens. Is Anthony Scaramucci actually going to organize a primary challenge against Trump? No. Is Denmark going to fall off as a U.S. ally? No. Is Israel’s fate going to rise or fall on the travels of a couple of left-wing congresswomen? No.

What’s the political balance for Trump? I believe the constant Trump static is a negative for him, but sometimes I wonder. What Franklin Roosevelt was to the age of radio and Ronald Reagan to the age of network TV, Trump is to the age of the screen, when we crave constant distraction, adrenaline rushes, and entertainment. The problem with the return to normality promised by Joe Biden is that what’s normal might well have unalterably changed.

Even if Trump is hurting himself with his sensory-overload presidency, the Democrats nominate someone dull at their own risk.

© 2019 by King Features Syndicate

I’m trying to think of the most charitable, reasonable explanation for Trump’s recent string of bizarre tweets. Why would the leader of the free world tweet approvingly a deranged compliment declaring that Israelis love him like he’s the “second coming of God”?

….like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God…But American Jews don’t know him or like him. They don’t even know what they’re doing or saying anymore. It makes no sense! But that’s OK, if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’s good for…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 21, 2019

Why would he believe he could “order” American companies to change their business practices? Does he believe he can?

….better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019

And what’s the justification for this?

….My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2019

Trump’s defenders constantly tell me that Trump’s outbursts — for all the political damage they cause — at least demonstrate that he “fights.” They at least demonstrate that he will resist the media and that he stands for the people who have no voice.

But in his recent outbursts, he looks less like a man who “fights” than a man who panics. He’s desperate for approval and prone to public temper tantrums in times of stress. He makes statements that are totally divorced from reality or from the actual powers and duties of his office. If you had a boss who acted like this in trying times, you wouldn’t cheer him for fighting. You’d be worried. You’d be trying desperately to get him to calm down.

In fact, we’ve all likely seen this behavior in the real world, and it’s disturbing and disconcerting when it’s the manager of a McDonald’s. It’s alarming when it’s a partner in a law firm. Can everyone but the rally Trumpists finally say that this behavior raises questions about his fitness for office?

I  sometimes think about the report from last year when Trump threw a Starburst candy at German chancellor Angela Merkel and said, “Don’t say I never give you anything.” On the one hand, the image itself is irresistibly and guiltily funny. If you consider it on its own, there is a part of your spleen, something about being an American human, that obliges you to revel in that moment. An occasional self-conscious lapse from decorum among the powerful is charming. A well-chosen one can be almost sublime.

But a total insensibility to the dignity of one’s high office is perverse. It’s important to remember that if Barack Obama had done something like that Starburst trick, Republican blatherers would have put it into the great roll-call of unpresidential behavior that includes Bill Clinton’s sexual harassment of an intern, his staffers’ impish removal of the “W” keys on White House computers, Sandy Berger’s alleged “documents in his socks” moment, and Barack Obama’s khaki-suit fiasco. That last one still doesn’t make sense to me.

There’s still a week to go in this normally slow news month, but I’m tapping out. Donald Trump’s August 2019 has had so much sound and fury, it must signify something.

Where to begin? There was the frightening and incongruous grinning and thumbs up over an infant recently orphaned by a mass shooter. He actually took the occasion to remind people his rally in El Paso was more successful than Beto O’Rourke’s. Not long after that, there were the president’s suggestions that his predecessor might have been involved in murdering Jeffrey Epstein. Soon there commenced the weeks-long reality-TV-quality spat with former spokesman Anthony Scaramucci. Each one of these would normally, on its own, be a scandal large enough to be recalled in the first paragraphs summing up a president’s mixed legacy. For Trump it’s just a few days.

There was the leak of Trump’s interest in purchasing Greenland from Denmark. For those who know a little history, acquiring this extension of North America makes some strategic sense and has interested several presidents. For those with a sense of humor, there should be an ability to appreciate Trump’s acquisitiveness leading him to the truth on the matter. But then the big galoot couldn’t take a hint that Denmark isn’t interested in such a sale, and he caused a needlessly embarrassing diplomatic fight over it.

More recently, Trump is promoting claims that Israelis “love him like he’s the King of Israel” and “love him like he’s the second coming of God.” A few days later he is tweeting about the chairman of the Federal Reserve: “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?” And then absurdly proclaiming, “The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China . . .”

I know what you’re thinking: Judges! But the judges!

Sure. They’re great. Fine. Whatever. Let’s get back to the subject at hand.

I remember sort of rolling my eyes when, 20 years ago, George W. Bush kept repeating that he would “restore honor and dignity” to the White House, a big applause line. He would even raise his hand, like he was taking an oath. But Trump is wearing out not just my patience but my cynicism and giving me a deeper appreciation for decorum.

It is supremely doubtful that Trump’s successors could sustain his new anti-norms; Trump’s combination of shamelessness and stamina is blessedly rare. Most normal people still know better than to just be themselves, warts and all, when entrusted with responsibility.

We need decorum because human beings are almost too malleable. We habituate ourselves to anything. Even this presidency. The constant break from the norm doesn’t just make the president perverse; it does something to us too.

Not long before he died, William F. Buckley was commenting on the state of conservatism. He longed for the repristination of its ideas. His word, of course. We have to be honest with ourselves. We’re not going to get to return to anything pristine, we’re not going to have the time for serious reflection or thought at all, if we let this jackanapes in the Oval Office have all the attention he covets. “Jackanapes” is another Buckley word in need of recovery.