Guardian Is Worried Sick about a Trump Second Term—Call It Their ‘House of Lords Moment’

Dec. 3, 2019 (EIRNS)—The Guardian’s Julian Borger, writing from Washington as the leaders of NATO were gathering in London, reports that the Europeans fear that if President Donald Trump is re-elected in 2020, that will be the end of the North Atlantic alliance. The fears that Borger reports are reflective of the December 2018 House of Lords report “U.K. Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order,” in which the British aristocracy announced that they couldn’t allow Trump to win a second term, at any cost, because “the damage to U.K./U.S. relations will be longer lasting....”

Borger cites an NBC report from Nov. 12 in which John Bolton, fired as Trump’s national security adviser in September, was quoted saying that Trump could “go full isolationist” if he wins re-election in November 2020, withdrawing from NATO and other international alliances. “The greatest fear is what he would do in a second term. He would be more free from constraints,” an unnamed European diplomat in Washington told Borger, and saying that he was under pressure from his capital to assess what a second Trump term would look like. “It is impossible to predict,” he said.

“I think what Bolton says resonates with people because it is something that has worried people since Trump took office and there is concern that he would feel less constrained in a second term, and could actually do something,” said Amanda Sloat, a former senior State Department official now at the Brookings Institution. “Given that you have someone who was working very closely with the President over the last year expressing that concern himself, I think it is bringing back to the fore the possibility that this is something that could happen in a Trump second term.”

Bolton’s referenced, undoubtedly well-paid remarks were made to a Nov. 6 “private gathering” of investors during Morgan Stanley’s global investment event in Miami. According to the Nov. 12 NBC story, Bolton ripped Trump’s policy towards Turkey and relationship with Erdogan and supported “Trump’s stance against China on trade.” But the key was, in the Guardian’s view, his answer to the question of what he thinks will happen in January 2021 if Trump is re-elected.

“Bolton responded by taking a swipe at Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Ivanka Trump—both of whom are senior White House advisers—and at Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), three people familiar with his remarks said,” NBC reported. “Bolton said Trump could go full isolationist—with the faction of the Republican Party that aligns with Paul’s foreign policy views taking over the GOP—and could withdraw the U.S. from NATO and other international alliances, three people present for his remarks said.”