AS USUAL, THIS US PRESIDENT DOES NOT MAKE US PROUD

…A dour Trump in Paris

Trump looked uncomfortable and was totally list-less in Paris.

“The Europe-United States Divorce: Tensions in the Western Family.”  This was the headline in the French weekend newspaper Le Monde.  It was accompanied by a photo of Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, covering her face with her hands.  Trump was not making a sound, but his negative presence could still be heard loud and clear.

It is also becoming understood that the larger percentage of Trump’s cabinet do not agree with Trump’s negative attitude toward the nation’s in Europe.

We have known for some time that President Trump just loves to throw Twitter bombs that explode in total offensiveness. He also must love delivering his speeches that contain insults and so many falsehoods.  He has learned to announce new policies on a whim, while most of them are usually constitutionally questionable.

However, on this trip to Europe, the president hardly said a word, he did not throw his sharp elbows at his peers in Europe, but his sullen attitude came across once again as an outrage to the other world leaders.

This was a summary of the images of the president’s trip to Europe on a time which was supposed to be a 100-year-old tribute to the end of World War I.  It was instead, a grim trip that was once again, all about Trump, but in a forbidding way.

Trump looked uncomfortable and was totally list-less in his bilateral meeting with French President Macron, whose positive energy stood out in stark contrast to Trump’s downbeat attitude.  (Could this be his delayed reaction to the “Blue Wave Mid-term Election Results?)

Trump was embarrassingly a no show at a scheduled tour of a military cemetery for Americans, (He said it was due to the bad weather), but all the other world leaders were somehow able to publicly pay homage to those who died on the battlefield.

Instead, the US President holed up at the US Ambassador’s residence, announcing hours later that he had spent a few hours making calls and attending meetings.  As usual, he did not offer as to whom or about what was in those calls and meetings.

In his speech eventually honoring WWI soldiers, Trump appeared bored and he vowed to preserve 'civilization ... peace', whatever that means to him.

At the Sunday ceremony, Trump arrived separately from the 60 other leaders at the Arc de Triomphe.  Trump had no speaking role, and he sat stone-faced as Macron railed against the rise in Nationalism, which was an obvious rebuke of Trump’s professed Nationalist worldview.

The overall takeaway to many attendees was a president turning away from Europe and the world in general.  A man occupying the office of the leader of the free world who appeared withdrawn and unenthusiastic on this global stage.

“Watching the event from France I cannot recall a time when America seemed so isolated,” said David Axelrod, a senior political adviser to former President Barack Obama. “ 'America First ' feels like America Alone.”

On previous foreign trips, Trump had made his presence felt by taking great pains to push other leaders around. He had shoved past the prime minister of Monte­negro, just to get to the front of a group of fellow leaders at a dedication ceremony of a new NATO headquarters.  This was a year ago.  He also engaged in  a macho 29 second handshake with Macron.  This was during a visit to Paris in 2017 for the Bastille Day parade.

Trump abruptly revoked US support for a joint communique at the Group of Seven Summit last spring.  This was his way to criticize the mild criticism of Trump from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, whom Trump called “mild and meek” and “very dishonest & weak” in one of his famous Tweets. 

He also disparaged British Prime Minister, Theresa May, in an interview with a London newspaper that was published just as he arrived in the country to meet her last July.

To understand how really up set the president is about the mid-term elections, before he left for Paris:

• Trump had been on a tear of executive actions after a midterm election in which Republicans lost control of the House.
• He ousted Jeff Sessions as Attorney General and named a loyalist as his temporary replacement.
• He banned a CNN correspondent from the White House and refused to answer the reporter's question.
• He signed a proclamation to deny asylum to Central American migrants, one that will obviously draw legal challenges.

But in Paris, the national security adviser John Bolton had said Trump was likely to meet with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin.  That did not happen. (At least they both had decided to not take away the attetion to the anniversary celebration.  I'll bet that was Putin's decision, not Trump's.)

At a dinner for the world leaders late Saturday at the presidential palace, the White House press pool was kept outside, which was a strange, rare event.  The press was not even allowed for the standard “pool spray” in which they are permitted to enter for a quick photo-op.

But Trump did make some news at that dinner, but not necessarily because he wanted to.

It was the Turkish government that released a photo of Trump with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who said he had presented evidence that he American/Saudi journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Turkey as part of a Saudi government assassination plot.

Want to bet that won't make any difference to the bro-mance between the Trump administration and the Saudi Crown Prince...?

The White House press secretary Sarah Sanders grudgingly confirmed to reporters the next day that the two leaders had been seated together and had spoken about the journalist’s death.

But Trump was relatively mum on foreign affairs during the Paris trip.

All he did was to tweet happy birthday wishes to the US Marine Corps on Saturday and a Veterans’ Day greeting to the troops on Sunday.

However, as expected, he also wrote several highly insensitive tweets about the forest fires in California and he repeated a falsehood he has said before, implying that Democrats are trying to steal elections in Florida after the state began a recount in the gubernatorial and US Senate races in which GOP candidates held very narrow leads.

There was a negative reaction to a video from a Washington Post reporter showing world leaders striding together along the Champs-Elysees, with Trump not participating.  Michael Hayden, who served as director of the CIA and the National Security Agency under President George W. Bush, wrote on Twitter: “WHAT!!! (Actually, he wrote what the xxxx )”.

David Rothkopf, a former editor of Foreign Policy magazine, mocked Trump with: “The isolationism seems to be working. Have you ever seen an American president more isolated than Trump appears to be in Paris?”

In Paris, the local newspapers were also highly critical of the president.

Le Journal’s Sunday cover led with a close-up photo of Trump pointing a finger and the headline, “Why Trump threatens us.”

Le Parisien went with a photo of Trump and Macron facing off and the headline, “Macron’s other front.”

Yes, this is our president.  And we are stuck with him until who knows when...?

Copyright G. Ater 2018