October 15th, 2019
By Denny Gulino
THE WHITE HOUSE (MaceNews) – “Never a dull moment” doesn’t quite capture the atmosphere these days at the White House, where the show never stops, geopolitical events are triggered in far off places and the impeachment saga keeps deepening.
So this particular Tuesday evening, as the sun goes down, cameramen are positioned on the North driveway, hoping to catch video of the family of Harry Dunn arrive.
The photo opportunity was organized on the spur of the moment, not by the press staff, but by a lower level staffer who attends to matters around the Oval Office.
The Harry Dunn family? You’ll recognize the story of a British family whose 19-year-old son was killed by an American driving on the wrong side of the road, an American who traveled to the U.S. afterward with diplomatic immunity – which was later declared to be invalid.
So mother and dad arrived by taxi, invited by someone at the White House. They go inside. Camera crews wait outside as everyone wonders if it is President Trump with whom they meet, and what would he tell them? What is the point of the invitation?
The wait goes on as darkness becomes a problem for the photographers. One by one, and sometime two by twos, most the expensive correspondent talent goes home, leaving the producers and camera people behind to catch whatever happens. Whatever might happen was too late to make the evening news.
At one point the photographers look up to see the astonishing colors created at sundown over the White House and take pictures of what has become a purple sky studded with whisps of pink clouds, with a brightly lit White House in the background.
Nothing seems to happen. The family never comes out. Someone says they left by another door. Someone else says they were sighted in a White House hallway, on the way to dinner perhaps. Grumbling at the hour and a half wasted, the camera crews disperse.
But one of those high-paid and a few photographers who stayed behind got a brief comment nevertheless.
Later, the Dunn family, Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn, did talk to British TV cameras and said Trump offered to have them talk to Anne Sacoolas, the woman behind the wheel who has admitted to causing the fatal accident. He said she was waiting in the next room. They refused Trump’s offer, saying they wanted to speak to her on their terms, back in the UK.
They added they did not think such a meeting would be fair to Sacoolas as well. Trump held Charlotte Charles hand tightly, she said, and said he would try to approach the matter in a different way.
It was only last Friday that everyone was kept in suspense as the China negotiators visited the Oval Office, as if the China trade talks depended on the climactic face-to-face meeting.
It gradually dawned on many that the question posed last Thursday by the president, as he said China wants to make a deal and the question is, “Do I want to make a deal?” had obviously been answered long before. China was not sending a vice premier and many top-level functionaries to Washington without some guarantee they would not be humiliated and sent home.
So it seems to the observer that reality at the White House is something reinterpreted day by day. What seems to be impromptu and ad hoc can actually be as it appears, or it can be for the sake of some TV drama.
President Trump’s decision to take the the U.S. barrier troops from between Turkey’s weaponry and the Kurds was seemingly taken on the spur of the moment, not much differently than the invitation offered to the Harry Dunn family.
As Russian troops occupy a just abandoned U.S. outpost and take up positions as the new barrier between Turkey and the Kurds, the U.S. imposes some economic sanctions as Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill prepare to do much more on their own, if they can muster veto-proof majorities.
And for a time the Turkish lira strengthens, as the U.S. demands a cease-fire, not a withdrawal.
Tuesday’s stock markets in the U.S. are positive throughout the day, and end up more than 1%, as investors seem to be thinking, whatever has happened in the last few days on trade, on Turkey, it could probably be a lot worse.
A close observer of the situation has an interesting take on the incredibly complex geopolitical aftermath of the president’s decision. Russia is ready to pay its dues as peacekeeper for the payoff it could only dream of, a rift, complete with economic sanctions, between NATO allies.
Impeachment inquiry? It was a bombshell disclosure that John Bolton – quit or fired as national security chief – told one of his deputies to inform government lawyers that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney and Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani were in cahoots about whatever was the plan involving Ukraine.
Giuliani says no dice answering that subpoena from House Democrats. Other testimony behind closed doors continues. Never a dull – nor an entirely predictable – moment.
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Reach this reporter at: denny@macenews.com