Trump: An international dud
President Trump is now fighting wars on two fronts.
In this country, he’s battling those pesky, impeachment-happy Democrats.
Overseas, he’s battling any world leader who doesn’t bow (or curtsy) at the sight of him.
At this point, he’s losing on both fronts.
Last week, while Democrats were busily lining up the requisite plans-of-attack to try to remove him from office, Trump was the source of guffaws in London.
NATO has been the very definition of international cooperation for 70 years.
The twenty-nine member nations gathered to celebrate that milestone harmoniously.
That didn’t happen, thanks to our petulant president, who ruffled feathers no matter where he appeared.
That’s predictable.
Trump’s desperate need to appear to be more important than other world leaders at NATO, G7 and G20 summits, makes him look like a 13-year-old playing “King of the Hill.”
In May of 2017, at the NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium, he forcibly pushed aside the Prime Minister of Montenegro, while sticking out his chest like he’d just won a prize.
That video, as they say, has gone viral.
I’d imagine other world leaders have seen it and taken note of the fact that Donald John Trump simply craves attention.
When he made his first appearance at the NATO summit last week, he sat alongside French President Emmanuel Macron.
What had been designed as a brief question and answer session, ballooned into a 52-minute Trump tour de force.
Trump took the opportunity to attack Barack Obama, Democrats in general, and to congratulate himself profusely – and even for things he had nothing to do with. Nothing new there.
He also made sure he’d get in a few low blows aimed at the Democratic Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee – Adam Schiff.
“I think he’s a maniac. I think Adam Schiff is a deranged human being. I think he grew up with a complex for reasons that are obvious. I think he’s a very sick man. And he lies. This is a sick person. He’s a liar,” Trump said.
All while Macron obviously wondered who Adam Schiff is? And what would he have to do with 70 years of NATO?
Trump spent nearly two hours on that first day, beating his gums about his personal likes and dislikes.
By the time the world leaders reached Buckingham Palace for a gathering with the Queen of England, several of them (Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, French President Macron, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson) were caught on camera making fun of Trump and his nearly hourlong blather session with Macron.
There was laughter all around, but it was Trudeau who could be heard saying, “You just watched his team’s jaws drop to the floor.”
Trump needs to be the center of attention.
But certainly not that way.
By the time Trump was asked about that video, it had already been circulated about the globe.
He bristled, then he employed a technique used only by teenaged girls and boys – he called him “two-faced.”
Yep! He went there.
But there was more.
Later, on the final day of the summit, Boris Johnson held his own news conference since it was his country that played host to it.
Many of the questions asked by reporters had nothing to do with NATO or the summit.
“Do you believe that as a leader, and as a man, that Donald Trump is good for the West and good for Britain?” asked one British reporter.
Johnson carefully avoided characterizing Trump. He preferred, instead, to talk about Great Britain’s closeness to the United States over the years.
One of the British reporters seemed to indicate that folks overseas are as aware of how Trump lies as we are in this country.
He asked, “Prime Minister, the president said yesterday that he doesn’t know Prince Andrew. Yet, there’s plenty of evidence that Prince Andrew hosted him earlier this year. That they played golf together. Do you think that President Trump is an amnesiac? Or that he’s a serial liar?”
Ouch!
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter, and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.