For weeks, journalists have been asking Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner for president, to name his foreign policy brain trust. Okay, it doesn’t have to be a panoply of knowledgeable people; how about even a handful?
Repeatedly, Mr. Trump has deflected or deferred such requests. On March 8, for instance, he said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that “there’s not a team” yet. But he insisted he was talking with “far more than three people” and would reveal their identities in a “fairly short period of time.”
Now, we have a more definitive answer and it’s horrifying: “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain,” he said on Wednesday, also on “Morning Joe.”
“My primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff,” he added.
Obviously, anyone who runs for president must rely ultimately on his or her knowledge and judgment in making decisions. But every American president has also had the wisdom, and humility, to enlist experienced people as advisers, realizing that one person cannot possibly know everything about the complex and dangerous world beyond America’s shores. In fact, recruiting the “best and brightest” for this task has usually been the goal.
If anyone needs foreign policy advice, it is Mr. Trump. More than any presidential candidate in recent history, he has shown no serious aptitude for or interest in the details of national security issues, preferring to fall back on jingoism and baffling bromides (“We have to take ISIS out” or “I would consult with the best people”).
In one recent debate, he demonstrated that he didn’t even know that the nuclear arsenal consists of three kinds of delivery vehicles – submarines, missiles and bombers. If he doesn’t understand that basic fact, how can he be trusted to know how such weapons fit into the overall security strategy? In another, he said it could require “20,000 to 30,000” American troops to defeat the Islamic State. Where did he get that number? Does he really believe Americans are prepared to send such large numbers of their sons and daughters back to the Middle East?
One reason Mr. Trump is unable to name a foreign policy team is because many of the most experienced people in the Republican national security establishment have shunned him. In a letter earlier this month, a group of those experts that has now grown to over 100 declared that he would use his authority as president in “ways that make America less safe.” Calling him “fundamentally dishonest,” they slammed his “admiration for foreign dictators,” his hateful anti-Muslim rhetoric, his embrace of torture, his promise to aggressively wage trade wars and the fact that “his vision of American influence and power in the world is wildly inconsistent and unmoored in principle.”
Mr. Trump is well on his way to becoming the Republican nominee. His refusal to look beyond himself for expert advice on dealing with the formidable challenges that will confront the next president, from the Islamic State to China, Russia, Syria and everything in between, only underscores the risk his candidacy poses to the country and the world.
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