Has Trump Gone Batshit Crazy?

UPDATE below: Putin reacts.

By Robert Wenzel

Nutjob National Security Adviser John Bolton must now live rent free in President Trump's head because Trump foreign policy has gone from bad to horrific. Only Bolton would dare promote such a policy shift in the president's head. 

Speaking today during an Oval Office meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, Trump said he may move about 2,000 U.S. troops from other parts of Europe into Poland.

“We haven’t totally made up a decision,” the president said, adding that he would be taking any U.S. troops “from Germany or moving them from another location.”

The Hill reports U.S. official (Bolton?) had said Tuesday the president planned to deploy 1,000 U.S. troops to Poland in order to "deter Russian military activity" along the Polish border.

This is batshit crazy. Why does the US have any interest in the Polish-Russian border? This does nothing but continue US hostile aggression around the Russian border.

But it is worse.

Trump said today that he’s considering using U.S. sanctions to stop construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany.

This is remarkable further US hostile aggression against Russia.

“We’re protecting Germany from Russia, and Russia is getting billions and billions of dollars in money from Germany” for its gas, Trump told reporters at the White House during the meeting with  Duda.

Trump is protecting Germany from Russia when they both simply want to trade?

What a dumb and arrogant asshole.

Bloomberg reports:

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry said during a visit to Ukraine in May that he expected Congress to prepare legislation to sanction companies involved in the pipeline’s construction.

Senators Ted Cruz, a Texas Republican, and Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, have drafted a bill that would target U.S. sanctions at vessels laying the pipeline and deny U.S. visas to executives from companies linked to the ships. The legislation would also block transactions in U.S.-based property or interests belonging to those individuals and would penalize entities that provide insurance to the project.

I repeat this is an attempt to block free trade between Germany and Russia by a country an ocean and thousands of miles away.

Trump said he’ll meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Group of 20 summit in Osaka, Japan at the end of the month. This new aggression against Russia just before the meeting with Putin man smells at though it was hatched by Bolton to sabotage the Trump-Putin discussions. What could they possibly discuss with Trump surrounding Putin's country and blocking his ability to trade?

UPDATE

Via Bloomberg

Vladimir Putin hit back a day after the president slammed Russian gas supplies to Europe. "Our relationship with the U.S. is degrading, it's becoming worse and worse," Putin said. In the tariff war his sympathies are with "our strategic partners."




Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.