Notes on the Apocalypse

Hollywood is where things go crazy. There are the hot dirty winds off the desert that put everyone on edge. There are the earthquakes, and the fires. Living in Hollywood is like waiting for the end of the world, coming soon, but now living in America is like waiting for the end of the world. Donald Trump is our apocalyptic president – he’ll upend everything, or he’ll burn it all down.

One Hollywood writer knew all about that. Nathaniel West moved out here to Hollywood, from New York, and in a small apartment over on Ivar, wrote Day of the Locust – the tale of a disparate group of people whose dreams of success have, in fact, failed – Faye the starlet, Claude Estee the big-time producer, Homer Simpson, the hopelessly clumsy “everyman” – that’s where Matt Groening got the name – Abe Kusich, the tiny, vicious gangster, Earle Shoop the cowboy and Miguel the Mexican, his sidekick, and Adore Loomis, the spoiled child star, and her doting stage-mother. Homer Simpson resents them all. He resents everything. He protests. His last protest gets out of hand. The novel ends with a giant riot and massive fires that destroy Hollywood and then all of Los Angeles. It’s a metaphor for America. That novel made Nathaniel West famous.

That’s where we are. Burn it all down. Donald Trump once called the CIA a bunch of Nazis – they must have been the ones who leaked the Steele dossier. Burn down the CIA – and by the way, Vladimir Putin told Trump that the Russians did not meddle in our election. Trump said he believed Putin, and then thought better of that and said he saw no point in arguing with the guy – let it slide – no one will ever know one way or the other. But he will trash any institution that makes him uncomfortable, and now it’s the Justice Department and its FBI – they’re part of a Deep State conspiracy to overthrow the duly elected President of the United States – him. The whole Russian thing is a hoax. This is also an attempted coup. Burn down the Justice Department and its FBI – and burn up the Constitution. He has called a free press “the enemy of the people” – those doing their assigned jobs to find out what’s going with Russia and all the rest – so change the libel laws. He’ll sue them. He’ll bury them in legal costs. He’ll run them out of business. America will cheer.

His base will cheer, those who knew that America actually wanted some sort of national apocalypse. His base wanted a national apocalypse. They’re getting one. The rest of America is tagging along for the ride – and Donald Trump is Homer Simpson – the one in the West novel – resentful and not too bright, and dangerous because he’s resentful and not too bright. He might gleefully light a small fire, in protest, a small fire that might burn down the whole world.

He has his small Homer Simpson moments. The Daily Beast’s Asawin Suebsaeng reports on one of those, and of course it involves Omarosa Manigault Newman:

Long before she was his chief antagonist, Manigault-Newman was tapped by President Trump to handle veterans’ issues for the White House – causing immediate backlash from vets’ organizations who read this as a slap in the face and a betrayal of his campaign rhetoric about “taking care of our veterans.”

After some vocal public shaming from military veterans and advocates, Trump, accompanied by Manigault Newman, met with principals from various vets’ organizations in the Roosevelt Room on March 17, 2017.

That didn’t go well:

During this White House meeting, certain details of which have not been previously reported, the president managed to again annoy and confuse U.S. war veterans, this time by getting into a bizarre, protracted argument with Vietnam War vets present about the movie Apocalypse Now and the herbicide Agent Orange.

“It was really fucking weird,” one attendee bluntly assessed to The Daily Beast.

It was this weird:

The meeting included President Trump and the envoys of nearly a dozen major vets groups – including the American Legion, Vietnam Veterans of America, American Veterans, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and the right-leaning Concerned Veterans for America – as well as senior staffers such as Stephen Miller, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer, and Manigault Newman surrounding the large table.

The president began going around the room asking the different representatives what they were working on and how his administration could help, having made veterans’ issues a cornerstone of his 2016 campaign rhetoric.

Soon, he got to Rick Weidman, co-founder of Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA), who was one of Vietnam vets in the room that day, having served a tour of duty in 1969 as a medic.

During the course of the meeting, Weidman brought up the issue of Agent Orange, an extremely notorious component of the U.S. herbicidal warfare on Vietnam. Weidman was imploring the president and his team to permit access to benefits for a broader number of vets who have said they were poisoned by Agent Orange.

Trump responded by saying, “That’s taken care of,” according to people in the room.

After a bit of awkward silence, because it takes time to figure out a way to deal, respectfully, with a president who had no idea what was really going on, they found a way to deal with this:

Attendees began explaining to the president that the VA had not made enough progress on the issue at all, to which Trump responded by abruptly derailing the meeting and asking the attendees if Agent Orange was “that stuff from that movie.”

He did not initially name the film he was referencing, but it quickly became clear, as Trump kept rambling, that he was referring to the classic 1979 Francis Ford Coppola epic Apocalypse Now, and specifically the famous helicopter attack scene set to the “Ride of the Valkyries.”

Source present at the time tell The Daily Beast that multiple people – including Vietnam War veterans – chimed in to inform the president that the Apocalypse Now set piece he was talking about showcased the U.S. military using napalm, not Agent Orange.

Trump refused to accept that he was mistaken and proceeded to say things like, “no, I think it’s that stuff from that movie.”

And he wouldn’t let it go:

He then went around the room polling attendees about if it was, in fact, napalm or Agent Orange in the famous scene from “that movie,” as the gathering – organized to focus on important, sometimes life-or-death issues for veterans – descended into a pointless debate over Apocalypse Now that the president simply would not concede, despite all the available evidence.

Finally, Trump made eye contact again with Weidman and asked him if it was napalm or Agent Orange. The VVA co-founder assured Trump, as did several before him, that it was in fact napalm, and said that he didn’t like the Coppola film and believed it to be a disservice to Vietnam War veterans.

According to two people in attendance, Trump then flippantly replied to the Vietnam vet, “Well, I think you just didn’t like the movie,” before finally moving on.

Suebsaeng adds a lot more detail, but that was the gist of it. This is a difficult man. He’s resentful and not too bright – and he’s stubborn – he’s always right, even when he’s wrong. He’ll also argue about trivia and forget the main point of the issues at hand. His mind wanders.

He’s also a bit casual about things:

A liberal veterans group is suing to block the influence of three outside advisers who have been secretly influencing the Department of Veterans Affairs from Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Florida.

ProPublica reported last week that the advisers – Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter, West Palm Beach doctor Bruce Moskowitz and Washington lawyer Marc Sherman – have been shaping VA personnel and policy decisions despite having no official role or relevant expertise.

The trio, sometimes referred to as the “Mar-a-Lago Crowd,” is failing to disclose its activities as required by federal law, according to a lawsuit filed today in federal court in Washington, D.C., by VoteVets, a liberal activist group that says it represents 500,000 supporters.

It seems that Donald Trump has told these three guys to tell the Director of Veterans Affairs what to do and what not to do, daily and in detail, and who to hire and who to fire – in effect, running the show for Donald Trump, who can’t be bothered with supervising the people nominally in charge over there. These three guys say it’s nothing like that. They’re not running the Veterans Administration. They’re just trying to help. After all, other club members tell the Army what to do and not to do on a daily basis in every command and every theater – and other club members do the same with the Navy and Marines and the Air Force – and the State Department too.

No, wait – they didn’t say that. But the chairman of Marvel Entertainment is no dummy. Think of all those superheroes. No, think of this:

VoteVets is represented by Democracy Forward, an activist group that challenges actions by the Trump administration. The group has brought similar lawsuits against a hunting council at the Interior Department and an infrastructure panel at the departments of Transportation and Commerce. In the latter case, a judge granted initial discovery…

ProPublica’s reporting also prompted congressional Democrats to open an investigation, call for hearings, request a probe by the VA’s internal watchdog and call on the VA secretary to cut ties with the Mar-a-Lago crowd.

Trump will object. He’s a stubborn man – he’s always right, even when he’s wrong. He’s Nathaniel West’s Homer Simpson.

He’s also a difficult man:

President Trump reportedly advocated for first lady Melania Trump to avoid creating an anti-bullying initiative.

The New York Times reported on Friday that President Trump suggested Melania choose a different topic after his wife formed a “Be Best” campaign that, in part, encourages good online behavior.

According to the Times, Trump told his wife that she was opening herself up to questions and backlash given his tendency to bully on Twitter by leading an effort to stop online harassment.

But Melania Trump rebuffed the president’s warning and later said publicly that she was prepared to face any criticism her public service project might attract.

The long New York Times profile is quite sympathetic. She knows her husband. He can be who he wants to be – she’s fine with that – but she’ll be who she wants to be. He loves to bully people. He lives to bully people. That’s not her. He’ll just have to live with that.

No one else is that lucky. Everyone else has to worry about what this resentful and not too bright man might do next. NBC News reported this:

President Donald Trump is increasingly venting frustration to his national security team about the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and showing renewed interest in a proposal by Blackwater founder Erik Prince to privatize the war, current and former senior administration officials said.

Prince’s idea, which first surfaced last year during the president’s Afghanistan strategy review, envisions replacing troops with private military contractors who would work for a special U.S. envoy for the war who would report directly to the president.

It has raised ethical and security concerns among senior military officials, key lawmakers and members of Trump’s national security team.

Of course it has. Private military contractors would work for a special envoy who would report directly to the president. This cuts out the military. They have no say in any of the operations. This cuts out Congress. They authorize the funding but then have no say in how the funds are spent – Donald and Erik will decide that – with perhaps a few Mar-a-Lago club members – and Erik Prince will make billions of dollars. But this president wants to burn things down:

A year after Trump’s strategy announcement, his advisers are worried his impatience with the Afghanistan conflict will cause him to seriously consider proposals like Prince’s or abruptly order a complete U.S. withdrawal, officials said.

This is a matter of blowing up what’s not working:

In an interview with NBC News, Prince said he believes Trump advisers who oppose his plan are painting “as rosy a picture as they can” of the situation on the ground, including that “peace is around the corner” with recent U.S. efforts for peace talks with the Taliban. He said he believes Trump’s advisers “over-emphasize the fluff and flare of these so-called peace talks.”

Prince, a staunch Trump supporter whose sister is Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, argues that after 17 years of war in Afghanistan, it’s time for the U.S. to try something new.

“I know he’s frustrated,” Prince said of the president. “He gave the Pentagon what they wanted. And they haven’t delivered.”

Prince said he hasn’t spoken directly to Trump about the plan, but told NBC News he plans to launch an aggressive media “air campaign” in coming days to try to get the president to embrace it.

This was the counter to that:

A spokesperson for the National Security Council said Trump is committed to the current strategy he signed off on after months of deliberations.

“No such proposal from Erik Prince is under consideration,” the spokesperson said. “The president, like most Americans, would like to see more progress in Afghanistan. However, he also recognizes that withdrawing precipitously from Afghanistan would lead to the re-emergence of terrorist safe havens, putting American national security and lives in danger.”

And things are not as bad as Prince says:

In recent briefings with Trump, the president’s advisers have emphasized the possibility of a political resolution with the Taliban and downplay the lack of military advances, officials said.

“The president hears about Afghan military and political progress and the possibility of reconciliation during his briefings, but he rarely gets the full picture of security on the ground,” said one senior U.S. official who has seen the briefing materials.

So forget this:

Secretary of Defense Mattis and Secretary of State Pompeo both oppose Prince’s plan, officials said. A senior State Department official said there’s “not a chance” it will be adopted. Asked for National Security Advisor Bolton’s view of Prince’s idea, the NSC spokesperson declined to comment.

But they don’t have what Prince has:

Prince was not an official adviser to the Trump campaign but donated $250,000 to pro-Trump causes during the campaign and met with members of Trump’s national security team during the transition. The Washington Post reported that special counsel Robert Mueller is looking into whether Prince tried to establish a backchannel between Russia and the Trump administration during a meeting with a Putin associate in the Seychelles in 2017.

Prince funded Trump, and sending a few billion dollars Prince’s way would buy Prince’s silence when Mueller finally has the goods on him and then charges him and tries to flip him against Trump – but this doesn’t seem to be a hush-money pay-off. This is just the burn-it-down crowd doing what they do:

When Prince’s plan had Trump’s attention in 2017, it had the backing of his former strategist Steve Bannon and the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner.

The plan appealed to Trump because of the promise that it would be less expensive and put fewer American troops at risk than the current U.S. strategy.

It calls for private contractors and aircraft to aid Afghan forces, with some help from the CIA and the Pentagon’s special operations forces – all of whom would be overseen by a U.S. government envoy for Afghanistan policy who reports directly to the president and is given the authority to coordinate with the Afghan government.

Prince believes Trump’s frustration now could provide a path for the privatization idea. Trump also has shown more willingness follow his instincts on foreign policy since reshuffling his national security team earlier this year to replace former National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson – both of whom opposed Prince’s plan.

Bannon and Kushner didn’t, and there’s Trump’s gut instinct, but there’s this:

A former senior administration official said while the U.S. has relied on foreign governments to help pay for military conflicts, it would be new to ask those countries to pay private security companies directly.

And there’s this:

Prince’s close ties to the United Arab Emirates, as well as the record of Blackwater, most notably in Iraq, would likely raise strong objections among administration officials and members of Congress. In 2007, Blackwater security contractors escorting a U.S. embassy convoy killed 17 civilians in Baghdad’s Nisour Square. One employee was convicted of first-degree murder and three were convicted of manslaughter, but their verdicts were overturned in 2017.

Expect more of that, or not:

The use of private security contractors in U.S. military conflicts has been controversial, including in Afghanistan. Former Afghan President Hamid Karzai curtailed the use of security contractors, a policy the current government would have to undo for a plan like the one proposed by Prince to be implemented.

There is that, but there’s an upside to this:

Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, said privatization would make it harder for Congress and others to know what precisely is happening in the war.

That may be the point of all this. No one should know what’s really going on. So forget Congress and all the rest of what Steve Bannon called the “administrative state” – burn it all down. In 2016, just enough of America actually wanted some sort of national apocalypse and voted for this resentful and not too bright apocalyptic president. Like Melania, America will have to live with that, but some do love the smell of napalm in the morning. Donald Trump knows his movies. It’s apocalypse now.