Tag Archives: Malaysia

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Trump’s Man in Malaysia: A Foreign Policy Blunder in the Making

If President Trump really wants to undermine American influence in Asia, he should insult Asian countries by nominating incompetent and offensive ambassadors to serve there. Oh wait. He’s already doing that.

On July 9, Trump nominated Nick Adams to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Malaysia. Adams was born in Australia, emigrated to the United States in 2012 and became an American citizen in 2021.

Once asked by The Sydney Morning Herald why he had left Australia for the United States, Adams replied: “Because I love guns, hot dogs, chicken fried steak, barbecue, cheerleaders, American football, small town parades, beauty pageants, pickup trucks, muscle cars and 16-lane freeways lined with supersized American flags.”

The New York Times has described him as “an early, fawning supporter of Mr. Trump” and cited his “incendiary rhetoric and vulgar humor that elevated him to political prominence”. Questions have also been raised about his role at the Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, a non-profit he founded in 2016.[1]

A prolific poster on social media (Adams has 625,000 followers on the social media platform X), he is unstinting in his ceaseless praise of Trump. “Just like King David from the Bible, President Trump is a good shepherd, and we are his flock!,” he posted on July 6.  “President Trump should be added to Mount Rushmore, he should have a monument built on the National Mall, and he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,” Adams posted on June 24. 

He has “amassed a conservative following with his over-the-top ‘alpha male’ persona”, making him “part of an unruly world of online content that primarily appeals to young men, known as the manosphere,” the New York Times reported. 

In 2023, Adams posted on X, “I go to Hooters. I eat rare steaks. I lift extremely heavy weights. I read the Bible every night. I am pursued by copious amounts of women. I am wildly successful. I have the physique of a Greek God. I have an IQ over 180. I am extremely charismatic. They hate this,” Adams posted on X in 2023.

Typical of his alpha male shtick, the Washington Post reported he had written  about “how if your wife is ‘high-maintenance’ then you’re a ‘loser’ no matter how hot she is,” and at  at a Capitol Hill Club Young Republicans gathering in Washington, D.C. , he said “ ‘nasty women’ are coming for two things: your mind and your testicles!”

Adams’ reputation precedes him in Asia. “Having risen to prominence on a wave of machismo, misogyny and crass humour, Mr Adams’ controversial online history includes Islamophobic comments, denigrating Mr Trump’s political rivals as supporters of Islam and railing against purported efforts to “teach Islam in schools,” reported The Straits Times, a Singaporean daily English-language newspaper. 

 “US President Donald Trump’s nomination of controversial internet personality Nick Adams as the next US ambassador to Malaysia has raised not only eyebrows but also questions about the fiery right-wing influencer’s suitability for the role and the state of relations between Washington and the Muslim-majority nation going forward,” The Straits Times said. Mainly Muslim ethnic Malays form the majority or nearly 60 per cent of the country’s 35 million population.

The South China Morning Post reported that Adams would be “a wrong fit” for Muslim-majority Malaysia which favors quiet diplomacy over headline-grabbing rhetoric. 

I’ve lived in Malaysia and I know it is a key United States partner in promoting regional stability and economic growth. That’s particularly the case in its position as the current chair of The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional grouping of states in Southeast Asia “that aims to promote economic and security cooperation among its ten members.” 

Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has criticized Trump’s long-threatened tariffs as “sharpened instruments of geopolitical rivalry” and has opposed American support for Israel’s actions in Gaza.

 “He (Adams) will have to tread a delicate and sophisticated line as the US and Malaysia negotiate trade tariffs, joust over their respective relationships with China and deal with an increasingly unstable geopolitical climate,” reported The Guardian. 

The Policy Circle has also pointed out, “The U.S. has a variety of interests at stake in the Asia Pacific region, with pressing diplomatic, national security, and economic considerations, all against the backdrop of increased geopolitical volatility.”

Will any of this matter to the Senate when, or if, it holds a vote on Adams’ nomination? 

Probably not, given the slavish behavior of Senate Republicans in pursuing Trump’s agenda. 

After all, Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law, was confirmed by the Senate as the United States Ambassador to France and Monaco in May by a vote of 51 to 45. This despite his previous conviction and prison sentence for tax evasion, witness tampering, and illegal campaign contributions, for which he was pardoned by President Trump in 2020. 

And Trump’s nomination of Kimberly Guilfoyle, a brash former model, former wife of now California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Fox News personality and former fiancée of Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., to serve as Ambassador to Greece appears to be moving along. 

Kimberly Guilfoyle speaking at Republican National Convention, July 17, 2024

With these precedents, why block an unqualified, crude, vulgar, Islamophobic alpha male from his confirmation?

[1] The Foundation for Liberty and American Greatness, (FLAG) is a non-profit “dedicated to promoting and providing high-quality civics education that informs students and families about the greatness of America and the power of the American Dream”. Nick Adams is Executive Director. According to a Form 990 filed with the Internal Revenue Service, Adams worked an average of 50 hours per week on Foundation business and was the only paid employee, in 2023 earning $411,209. That was a hefty increase from his 2022 compensation of $248,251. Why do so many of these political funds end up being just vehicles for personal grift?

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Things fall apart

I was enjoying a coffee and pastry at a Starbucks this morning when a man sitting next to me checking his smartphone and reading the paper turned and said, “It looks like the rebels or the Russians might have shot down a Malaysian Airlines plane carrying 300 people. Do you get the feeling everything is just unraveling?”

Yes.

A plan to transport three busloads of Central American families through San Diego for processing at the Murrieta Border Patrol station took an unexpected turn when scores of protesters blocked the buses from entering.

A plan to transport three busloads of Central American families through San Diego for processing at the Murrieta Border Patrol station took an unexpected turn when scores of protesters blocked the buses from entering.

Tens of thousands of children of all ages, most unaccompanied by adults, are flowing across the U.S. Southwest border. Frustration and anger is bubbling up all over the country. Some people are arguing that President Obama has encouraged the stream of immigrants and that strong steps need to be taken to control the U.S. border and send the immigrants home. Others argue the immigrants need to be treated with compassion and welcomed to America with open arms in the spirit of “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

Whichever side you are on, and just about everybody seems to have taken sides, just 28% of the public approves of the way President Obama is handling the surge of children from Central America, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center or the People & the Press.

Meanwhile, violence is spreading in Gaza and Israel after the kidnapping and killing of three Israeli teenagers in the West Bank set off a new cycle of violence in the region.

While Hamas militants and Israel exchange rocket fire, stories multiply of civilian deaths, including a story today reporting that four boys, ages 9 to 11, were killed on a beach west of Gaza City.

A boy on a Gaza beach killed in an Israeli attack is carried away.

A boy on a Gaza beach killed in an Israeli attack is carried away.

Of course, the only reason similar horrifying stories of civilian killings by the Hamas militants haven’t surfaced in Israel is because of its effective anti-rocket defenses.

In Ukraine, tension continues as Russia threatens the country, pro-Russian militants fight the government’s forces and, as noted earlier, rumors swirl that a Malaysian Airlines plane with 295 on board, including some Americans, that crashed in Ukraine near the Russian border was deliberately shot down. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry in Kiev asserted that the “the airplane was shot down by the Russian Buk missile system.”

wreckage of Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine

wreckage of Malaysia Airlines plane crash in Ukraine

In Egypt, after a popular uprising resulted in the first democratically-elected Islamic president in Egypt’s history, forces led by Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi overthrew the fledgling president and instigated an unforgiving campaign of retaliation against the Muslim Brotherhood and regime critics that continues to this day.

In Syria, after Obama insisted that use of chemical weapons by the the Assad regime would be “a red line for us,” Obama dithered and the civil war escalated, creating a country scarred with destruction and pushing out hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring counries.

obama-redlinespeech821

In Afghanistan, scene of what Obama called “the good war” that needed to be fought, chaos has ensued since the U.S. precipitously withdrew its troops.

In Iraq, after thousands of American soldiers gave their lives in an effort to create a sustainable peace, the U.S.-backed Shia-led government under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initiated a cleansing of the Sunni minority. Now we have a violent struggle going on in Iraq with mostly Sunni militants from the radical Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

A file image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province (AFP Photo / HO)

A file image uploaded on June 14, 2014 on the jihadist website Welayat Salahuddin allegedly shows militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) executing dozens of captured Iraqi security forces members at an unknown location in the Salaheddin province (AFP Photo / HO)

Meanwhile, despite a roaring stock market, economic insecurity reigns. Just 19% of those surveyed by Pew say economic conditions in the U.S. are excellent or good while 81% rate conditions as only fair or poor. About six-in-ten (62%) still say jobs are difficult to find locally.

Detroit Area Economy Worsens As Big Three Automakers Face Dire Crisis

Obama’s rating for handling the economy also has stayed negative, with 56% disapproving of the way Obama is handling the economy, according to the Pew survey. In fact, Obama’s job rating on the economy has been around 40% for most of the past five years.

Meanwhile, Obama, “a restless president weary of the obligations of the White House,” as the New York Times puts it, jets around the world for fundraisers and dinners with celebrities and wealthy supporters, taking as many breaks as he can for golf.

Barack Obama

Unravelling? You bet.