Are the President's Advisors On Strike?

Recently in The Bulwark, I speculated that President Trump’s betrayal of the Kurds would lead to much crazier things happening, or at least to much crazier things seeing the light of day, without responsible adults around to make everything look grown-up and professional.

That result was not long in coming. And yes, I’m talking about Trump’s crude, childish letter to Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which had everybody asking whether it could possibly be real.

Let’s be clear. Nobody was asking whether this was something Trump would write, because we’ve all seen his Twitter feed and we know that this sort of thing is his natural style of expression: “Don’t be a tough guy. Don’t be a fool! I will call you later.” That’s actually a bit more literate than his average tweet. What was a surprise is that this wasn’t coming from his personal Twitter feed but was released by the U.S. government, that it was not scribbled in crayon but typed out neatly on White House stationery.

How did that happen?

Read the rest at The Bulwark.