April 10, 2017

"While the weeks in the run-up to Chinese President Xi Jinping’s April 2017 summit with US President Donald Trump were filled with media reports of Trump and his Republican Party being in disarray, especially after their well-publicized and self-inflicted failure to replace the Obama administration's healthcare legislation, the first day of the Xi-Trump summit unexpectedly witnessed stark displays of political and military power by Trump and the Republicans (Frizell, 2017).  

The first of these events occurred when the Senate Republicans, led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, pushed through a controversial procedural change — the so-called 'nuclear option' — to defeat a Democrat filibuster on Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, thus allowing Gorsuch to be confirmed the next day as a Supreme Court Justice, and thereby allowing the Republicans to control not just the political trifecta of the Presidency, House of Representatives, and Senate, but now also the ideological slant of the Supreme Court (Gambino, 2017). The second and arguably more significant event that day occurred when Trump ordered missile strikes on Syria just before his state dinner with President Xi, confirming in action a consequential shift in his understanding of “America First” (Phillips, 2017)."

Read more:

http://www.ippreview.com/index.php/Blog/single/id/396.html

NISCSS does not necessarily share in or endorse the opinions of off-site commentators.