Kurds Aren’t the Only Ally Trump Has Lost

Would the Wall Street Journal consider walking away from Trump if the alternative were Elizabeth Warren? A recent headline atop the front page hinted that the newspaper’s right-leaning ownership could already be on that path: Turkey Launches Offensive Against U.S. Ally. Even the Trump-hating New York Times stopped short of saying so bluntly that the U.S. had sold out its erstwhile allies, the Kurds, by unleashing the Turkish military on them. Here’s how the Times cued up the same story: Turkey Launches Offensive Against U.S.-Backed Syrian Militia. Technically, that leader is more accurate than the Journal‘s, since there’s little chance the Kurds, legendary fighters who crushed Islamic State in Syria, still consider themselves U.S. allies or that they will ever again put their lives on the line for the U.S.

Trump for his part seems convinced that by telling Turkish President Erdogan to be gentle with the Kurds, a bloodbath can somehow be avoided.  Bear in mind that Turkey regards all Kurds as terrorists and presumably would rather see them dead than resettled anywhere near Turkey’s border with Syria. With understatement that is bound to haunt him on the campaign trail, Trump called the air and land assaults launched by the Turks last week ‘a bad idea.’ Even worse is his own strategy of standing down while Turkey, hellbent on killing every last Kurd, vaults into a leadership role in one of the most politically dangerous regions on earth.  Syria is destined to become still moreso if the 12,000 Islamic State terrorists imprisoned by the Kurds are loosed upon the world. Do Trump and his advisors think Turkey will simply take over as jailers of these human time bombs? They haven’t said because they simply don’t know.

Warren’s Moment

Until very recently, it was arguable that Trump would win re-election as long as the economy held up. Now, just as recession appears to be threatening, the president, in his eagerness to get U.S. troops out of the Middle East, has acted with such careless haste that even his most ardent supporters, Christian evangelicals and Lindsay Graham among them, are questioning his strategies. Other Trump diplomatic initiatives seem unlikely to yield bragging rights, although brag he will.  Kim Jong-un said he’s done with talks. As for China, the face-saving deal reportedly struck on Friday (and timidly reported as a “tentative, Phase-One trade pact”), will do little to burnish the President’s image. Nor will it long support the stock market, which has stayed sufficiently buoyant up until now to offer investors an enticing opportunity to ‘sell the news’. Shares have been feisty in the meantime, fortified by the imminent non-news concerning tariffs.

Meanwhile, Warren’s moment has unexpectedly arrived, energized by millions of self-proclaimed have-nots who see her ascendance as the best chance they may ever have to even the score with their economic betters. They would doubtless be thrilled to see the very same corporate America that feeds, houses and clothes them goaded to docility by Warren’s cattle prod. What do they have to lose? Half of those who pay taxes contribute only 3% to the government’s take. Although it’s inconceivable that the Wall Street Journal would endorse Warren, the paper has slowly shifted news coverage of Trump to emphasize his failures and weaknesses rather than his successes. The Journal‘s editorial page has not yet abandoned Trump and probably won’t, but it is clearly struggling to put a positive face on his zeal for isolationism, loose credit and governance by tweet. Because the Journal has the attention and respect of the political centrists who will decide the 2020 election, that is why the apparent anti-Trump drift of the newspaper’s headlines matters.