DCJ: This has been going on since before Trump but he has raised it to a much higher level. Think about the change since when JFK talked about public service and the Peace Corps, studying to become American diplomats via the Foreign Service. Today if you are a public servant you must be terrible, you must not know what you are doing. If you go around saying that government is corrupt, people are going to be corrupt. I mean there were no major scandals under Barack Obama.
LS: We are constantly bombarded with calls for leadership and hardly ever are presented with the notion of statesmanship, which entails vision and wisdom. Is statesmanship dead in the U.S.?
DCJ: No, but it is seriously damaged as long as Trump is President, he is manifestly unqualified to be President, he has not idea what he is doing.
LS: In your book you mention that Trump's relationship to Russia and Putin is that he is either a fool or a knowing Kremlin agent. Which is it?
DCJ: I think he is an agent of the Kremlin. He behaves and talks about Putin the same way mobsters talk who don't know they are being recorded. He is not a loyal American, he denigrates American intelligence agencies and praises the Kremlin. Putin believes democracy is a joke, and is the head of the biggest criminal organization in the world, the Russian oligarchs, who have repeatedly tried to raid the wealth of the West, tried to undermine banking, tax frauds.
LS: Has Trump forfeited the power of the pardon?
DCJ: No, he can pardon anybody except to prevent an act of impeachment. There is an argument that if he should pardon himself it would be invalidated by Federal judges. I would hope so. But if you pardon someone they no longer have 5th Amendment rights, plus many of the crimes may also be subject to New York state and we know the Special Prosecutor has worked closely with the New York State Attorney General so they are still subject to state prosecution. Hopefully, if the President uses it indiscriminately the people will wake up and realize the President is a criminal.
LS: It is often lamented that with respect to military power that we are always peopling to fight the last war. With ambivalence on the part of the Trump Presidency as regards cyber warfare, are we foolishly unprepared for the 21st century?
DCJ: Yes, so much has been written about how unprepared we are. Everybody does cyberwarfare. It is the nature of the world. We decided not to spend the money to deal with it.
LS: Is there bipartisan consensus on a vibrant infrastructure program?
DCJ: No, not at all. The rest of the world puts us to shame -- highways, rail systems, airports, bridges. We have engaged in decades of malign neglect. There is no support for it here. Used to be bipartisan but government is bad now.
LS: We are due for a recession. Will the recently passed tax giveaway accelerate and worsen the impacts of the coming downturn?
DCJ: In the short run probably not. But the economy is slowing down. The number of new private sector jobs in Trump's first year is about 20 percent below the average of Obama's after the loss of jobs came to an end in 2010. The way they designed this tax bill there may be a short-term stimulus but interest rates are going up, that means the share of of federal spending to pay interest is going up, squeezing out other things.
Final thoughts: Don't be cynical. If you don't know facts, you cannot have a hope of persuading other folks to change their minds.
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