If Republican presidential challengers really want to create a wedge between President Trump and the GOP, they should start with foreign policy. It’s not just the trade war with China that has Republicans nervous and fearful of a recession. His entire foreign policy is a nightmare for the right.

First there is Trump’s fixation on returning Russia to the Group of Seven, even though he still refuses to acknowledge that Moscow’s exit was the result of Russia’s invasion of, and continued occupation of, Ukraine. PBS reports on this exchange at the press conference following the G-7 meeting:

“Why do you keep using the misleading statement that Russia outsmarted President Obama when other countries have said the reason Russia was kicked out was very clearly because they annexed Crimea?” asked PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor during the late afternoon press conference in Biarritz, France. “Why would you keep repeating what some people see as a clear lie?”
“I know you like President Obama,” Trump shot back, “but it was annexed during his term. If it was during my term, I would say, ‘Sorry, folks, I made a mistake.’ . . . Obama was pure and simply outsmarted. . . . A lot of people say having Russia, which is a power, having them inside the room is better than having them outside the room . . . My inclination is to say yes, they should be in,” said Trump, before adding that a “certain section of Ukraine that you know very well was sort of taken away from President Obama. Not taken away from President Trump, taken away from President Obama. President Obama was not happy that this happened because it was embarrassing to him, right? It was very embarrassing to him. And he wanted Russia to be out of the what was called the G8.”

This is gibberish (a section of Ukraine was taken from Obama?!?), and no other member of the G-7 is interested in letting Russia back on.

There is also his love affair with Kim Jong Un, whom he will not criticize for horrific human rights abuses nor even take up the resumption of tests. I’m fairly certain Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would be tougher on North Korea.

Next up is his promised pullout from Afghanistan. Trump’s blatant anti-Semitic statements don’t provoke comment from Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), but his Afghan plans sure do. “We should not withdraw U.S. forces based on a political timetable that grants concessions to the Taliban and allows the terrorists to maintain safe havens from which they can plan and train for future attacks in the West. We cannot accept a deal that places America’s security in the hands of the Taliban,” she wrote in an op-ed for The Post. “Agreeing to such a deal would not be ending a war, it would be losing it — to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Islamic State.”

The State Department is about to capitulate to the Taliban, al-Qaeda’s longtime ally, in order to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan, argues Rep. Liz Cheney. (The Washington Post)

And that brings us to Iran. Wait, you ask, didn’t Trump please conservatives by pulling out of the Iran deal? True, but the notion of Trump sitting down with the Iranians like he did with Kim should panic Republicans. The New York Times reports:

President Trump said on Monday that he would be open to meeting with President Hassan Rouhani of Iran, and would even be willing to support short-term loans to get through [sic] Tehran through its current financial difficulties if talks open.
Mr. Trump was responding to an overture by President Emmanuel Macron of France, who said that he would try to set up such a meeting in the next few weeks, to seek a resolution of decades of conflict between Iran and the United States.
Mr. Macron, who said he had spoken with Mr. Rouhani, said that if the American and Iranian presidents met, “my conviction was that an agreement can be met,” addressing Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its destabilizing actions in the Middle East.

A cold chill should grip right-wing Iran hawks. You will remember Republicans had a conniption when President Barack Obama simply talked on the phone with Rouhani, deathly afraid he was giving something away or lending the Iranian president legitimacy. Imagine how the idea of a Trump-Rouhani summit sits with the these hawks, including national security adviser John Bolton.

In fact, two of the most conservative members of the Senate, Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) put out a statement Monday reading: “Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court in D.C. reaffirmed what many nations of the world have long recognized: that Iran bears responsibility for Houthi brutality against civilians in Yemen and their efforts to destabilize the region. The Houthis’ torture and murder of an American civilian in their custody, and the Iranian regime’s support for terrorism and torture, are reprehensible behaviors consistent with outlaws from the civilized world.” Do these senators or anyone else think Trump wouldn’t sign about any deal (including the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with new font) if he could get his version of “peace for our time”?

Trump is a buffoon, so consumed with his own ego that he looks to enemies and brutal dictators to assuage him, and so lacking in any understanding about the world that he’d accept rotten deals if he thought he’d get reelected. This unsettles a good number of Republicans, and should alarm us all. His new Republican rivals would do well to start pointing this out: Trump is weak. Any one of his challengers on the Republican side (and I’d argue on either side) would do a better job of protecting U.S. interests.

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