Sunday School 11/29/20

Welcome back, students. I hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving break - I know I enjoyed mine. And honestly? It was nice to leave you alone for a few days, don't you agree? 

I mean, we all know what's been going on: the president has been whining, golfing, lying, and threatening people. Joe Biden announced some cabinet picks. Crazy lawyers have been holding whacky press conferences. Talking heads have been talking. In a nutshell, the usual suspects are acting in the usual manner - this script writes itself. 

But now we're back, so let's pick it up again, starting with Chuck Todd and his interview with Adm. Mike Mullen (Ret.), who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs under both Dubya and Barack Obama, in the Meet the Press classroom. 

Mullen thinks the assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh makes it "much more challenging" for Joe Biden vis a vis the Iran nuclear deal; he also noted "there's an Israeli component" here, not in the context of allegations that Israel was behind the killing. Rather, he thinks the Israelis will do whatever they can to make sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. He hopes Biden can deal with the treaty and that he can "calm the waters" between the two countries.

Mullen's concerned about who's in the Pentagon,  and the people who were fired or left. 

...There are some real Trump loyalists there now, in charge, and it's pretty difficult to think that over the course of 50 or 60 days you can do something constructive, but you can do something that's really destructive. 

He said that he'd "be concerned" that issues will be raised like the one that was widely reported about a debate on taking some kind of action against Iran (Trump nixed that, we were told). He also said "we need to be very careful with" troop draw-downs.

The reality is, on the ground in places like Somalia and Afghanistan, there are still terrorists who would do us ill, and I want to play, actually, the game on their turf, and not play it here. 

And, he said, he learned on the Bush II to Obama transition that a president shouldn't be boxing in the incoming president, you want "to give (him) as many options and as much space as possible." And that, he said is "obviously the opposite case right now."

So, it appears that the current administration is trying to lock in as many options as -- as many issues as possible to make it much more difficult for President-elect Biden to govern. And actually, historically, that has just never been the case

His concern with that, and the late start that the Biden team has? 

I think, our allies, our friends, and our enemies look at us at a time of real fragility in that regard, and our enemies always try to look and take advantage of a transition period.

Next, let's move on to CNN's State of the Union classroom, where Dana Bash talked with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO), the chair of the Senate Rules Committee (it oversees elections.) Blunt refused to come right out and say that he accepts that Joe Biden is the President-elect. I've added some emphasis. Here's his first dodge.

Well, we are certainly moving forward as if that what is going to happen on January the 20th...But the president wants to see this process play out. The president-elect technically has to be elected president by the electors. That happens in the middle of December. And then, January the 6th, I'm one of the four members of the Congress that participates in the joint session that decides that those electoral votes are fully accepted. And, of course, that is when this process is over, when those votes are accepted and counted.

And, he said, transition money's been released, and folks are "working with the Biden administration, likely administration, on both the transition and the inauguration, as if we are moving forward."

Bash picked up on his "likely administration' comment and said, "So, is it safe to say that you do consider Joe Biden the president-elect?" Again,

Well, the president-elect will be the president-elect when the electors vote for him. There is no official job president-elect... And I think I'm on a list of -- that you're keeping at your network of Republican senators who haven't yet acknowledged that there's a president-elect, as if that's a significant thing.

Bash said it's not just the title of 'President-elect,' it's that Trump lost, he's losing the lawsuits, states are certifying the votes, "and, maybe even more importantly, the president is undermining the democratic process by talking about fraud that nobody can find..."  Blunt's response?

Well... We're at about -- we're at about the end of that process. And when that - when the states have certified, when this process is over, that's when you come to a conclusion. That's why these things are set up in that way.

And, he said, our democratic processes are strong enough to handle this crap (not in so many words, of course), and that he hopes Georgia Republicans go out and vote in the runoff, and "the president says he is going to Georgia next Saturday, so he must be thinking that voters need to vote as well."

He also he wishes that people would have been able to see that signatures were being checked in Pennsylvania, noting that

When you send ballots out to people that you don't know if they are still there or not, and they come back and you don't check the signatures, that is a huge problem."

Here's Bash putting a 'put that in your pipe and smoke it' kind of exclamation point on that part of their conversation.

OK. And, Senator, just to put a button on that, there is no evidence that people didn't see signatures. In fact, the state Supreme Court and now federal court have both thrown out the notion that that didn't happen. 

Finally, Martha Raddatz talked with another defense expert, Adm. William McRaven (Ret.), in ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos classroom. McRaven has not been shy in speaking out against Trump's leadership, in announcing his vote for Joe Biden, or that he's briefed the President-elect. McRaven's like Fauci - he's served under six presidents.

Talking about the murder of Fakhrizadeh, he suggests retaliation is almost inevitable, since they know or suspect that Israel was involved.

I don't see any way around it. They -- they're going to have to save face. And so now the issue becomes, what does that retaliation look like? Does that then begin to escalate the problems in the region? And that's going (not)to be good for anybody. The Iranians don't want to war with us. We don't want to go to war with Iran. So everybody needs to do the best they can to kind of lower the temperature and -- and try not to get this into an escalation mode.

McRaven shares Mullen's concerns about Trump having "taken out all the leadership in the Department of Defense," and replaced them with inexperienced people. And he's also concerned about the troop draw-downs, and more.

But what it appears is that this new administration in the Department of Defense is really rushing to get a lot of Trump's agenda resolved before a President Biden comes in.

He says "the rest of the world, of course, is just looking for a Biden administration to come in," and that they've been concerned for a long time about Trump.

And, frankly, if we are going to move forward, if this new national security team is going to move forward, they are going to need strong alliances. They are going to need a strong NATO. They are going to need strong partnerships with the ASEAN nations, for the African Union. 

He listed all the agreements and organizations we've abandoned, including the WHO, the TPP, the Paris Climate Accord, and the Open Skies treaty. And that's a problem.

... if we don’t abide by our own treaties, if we don’t recognize and support our own treaties, then who in the international community is going to want to partner with us in the future? So, President Trump has been playing a short game, I would offer. I hope President Biden will come in, strengthen these alliances, strengthen these coalitions, get back in to some of these organizations, as imperfect as they might be, and begin to play the long game.

On Biden's cabinet picks, which Raddatz suggested was a kind of 'back to the future' slate of nominees, McRaven disagrees. 

...this new group of national security professionals coming in are incredibly experienced, incredibly talented and they know each other. And that’s an important factor when it comes to working together. But they are going to approach these issues differently than certainly the Trump administration did, and I would offer to some degree differently than the Obama administration did.

As Raddatz said, "it will be a very interesting time." She's right about that.

See you around campus, assuming you're not in yellow zone or a red zone or under some other non-color-coded restriction. Be smart. Wear your mask. And if one of your elected officials says one thing about how to behave, but does another, please - yell at them, of course, but do as they say, not as they do.  

Be better.