Donald Trump is making his first visit to Britain today as president of the United States.
More to the point, this is the second stop on what could be the most consequential foreign trip of his presidency. It began at a NATO summit in Brussels on Wednesday and will end with a Putin summit in Helsinki on Monday.
Unfortunately, anyone who knows Trump knew that each stop would just present another opportunity for him to bolster his norm-wrecking presidency. He proved this by spending much of the NATO summit demanding protection payments from fellow members – like a Mafia don demanding racketeering payments from business owners.
But this kind of ignorant, gauche and reckless (bull-in-China-shop) behavior has become such a norm that it now evokes more gallows humor than serious concern. I’m sure I caught German Chancellor Angela Merkel rolling her eyes at one point during their meeting on the sidelines. This, when Trump’s cowardice allowed him to make only oblique reference to her face about putting the squeeze on NATO leaders to pay up.
In any event, I decided that cartoon images would provide compelling commentary for each stop – fully mindful of the adage “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Frankly, never before in the history of diplomacy has the foreign trip of a US president been worthy of little more than cartoonish ridicule: either we laugh at him, or he’ll make us cry.
NATO
Despite his anti-NATO bluster, Trump will do nothing to undermine its effectiveness. Instead, this shameless, congenital huckster is taking credit for the deal Obama negotiated in 2014, diplomatically. It committed all members to allocating at least 2 percent of their respective GDPs to defense over a 10-year period.
But perhaps General James Mattis, the US secretary of defense, should try disabusing Trump of his belief that Obama created NATO. Because this belief is probably the only reason Trump is trying so fiendishly to destroy it.
Britain
Trump is the first US president who is so reviled in the UK that British authorities dare not allow him to set foot in the nation’s capital. Londoners are planning protests like none anyone has ever seen against any head of state visiting anywhere in history. This is why Trump will be helicoptered everywhere — far from the baying crowds.
Most notably, he will be helicoptered to dinner with Prime Minister Theresa May at Blenheim Palace and tea with Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle — both of which are far outside London and heavily fortified against protests.
But there’s no denying the embarrassing extent to which the British government is going to protect the fragile ego of this US president. This is why Trump insisting that the British people like him a lot makes him look even more delusional than usual. And you can bet that if any country, let alone an ally, felt it had to do the same for Obama, Trump would’ve been leading the carnival barkers damning him for making the United States a laughingstock.
Putin
This image apes the kind of imagery that might have been cut from Brokeback Mountain for being just too homoerotic for general release. Lord knows Trump has shown time and again that he does not even want to know how to quit Pootie.
NOTE: Some of you are probably wondering why Trump retains so much support among his base, despite his record of incompetence and corruption — at home and abroad. Well, I explained why so many Americans fell for and continue to support a political shyster like Trump in “Polls Show Americans Are Too Stupid to Poll on Any Critical Issue,” September 14, 2016.
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