The Events: July 2018

There's an obvious issue with the Trump Events page. It contains an enormous quantity of links, which are exhausting to peruse, regardless of reading. A necessary solution would be to locate and highlight the crucial events of the month. I intended to select the most important action, the most significant event the Trump Administration, friends, families, former spokespeople, did and accentuate it. And then the conundrum...

What's worse?
A hint, a thought, a desire?
A word, a speech, a proposition?
An action, an initiation, a plan?
A lie, a deception, a deflection?
A disregard for civility, an insult, a slander?
A war, an arms agreement, a bombing?
An inaction, a hesitation, a reluctance?

For instance, one might assume the worst issue of July 1st, 2018 was: Canada slaps retaliatory tariffs on the United States. It's a concrete reaction to an action the President implemented. It's an unnecessary antagonism of a close ally who shares our ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all. And we've broken that trust. That's the action.

But then, there's: Silicon Valley frustrated by intelligence community's reticence on Russia. An inaction, which is really just a different type of action, reducing the United States' security. That's the hesitation.

Then the President called Europe as bad as China on trade, and is this insult worse than either of the preceding?

Following this, both the President and his National Security Adviser, John Bolton lied, claiming respectively, that Trump didn't tell Republicans to back the immigration bill, and that North Korea's nuclear program could be dismantled within a year. These examples are different kinds of lies. The first is such an obvious, there's evidence on your Twitter account, disregard any respect for the truth, lie, while the second is something that could possibly happen in an alternate Universe, but has absolutely no chance in ours and Bolton knows it.

Then the President speaks casually about how, a major action which he trumpeted as a great success, possibly won't turn out as he'd planned. North Korea might choose to continue its nuclear program and disregard the vague document it signed with the United States.

But perhaps worst of all is that which only hides in the recesses of thought, and in the nebulous planning sessions not revealed to the public, such as the secret White House plan to abandon the World Trade Organization. After Axios revealed this draft bill, the White House claimed it wasn't actual legislation, but only because no one had reviewed the text. Is it a sign of things to come?

It's incredibly difficult to determine the destructiveness of an event, except for the obvious such as the Helsinki Press Conference. Ultimately I did decide, and highlighted those events which seemed of particular relevance. I have to admit though, if I looked at the list again, I might choose an entirely different set of actions.

A few other thoughts as to what I hope to achieve with this record, and clarify the unwritten and ever changing rules as to what it records.

Though there are many terrible actions the United States takes every day, I'm trying to confine this Trump Events to actions oriented around the current President. For instance, the war in Yemen is an atrocity, aided and abetted by the United States government, but it began under President Obama, so unless there is a specific aspect which seems relevant to Trump, it won't be recorded here.

I suppose the simplest reason for keeping this list is expressed in the picture below picture, which was only further accentuated by the July 31st 2018 statement by the President (italics mine), “Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!” I want a record of the development, of the policies, the corruption, the lies, the resignations, the Mueller investigation, and the President's explanations.
After all that, if you're interested in perusing the Trump Events of July 2018, follow this link

And of further interest in lists and theories compiled by other people, I offer these three articles by Lawfare:  Seven Theories, Updated, A Resource Page.

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