Trump Dump: Foreign Policy (Thread I)

[Gandalf]

Someone totally needs to make a gritty cop show or big budget action movie about a heroic Internal Affairs officer.

Damn, just typing that makes me want to write it.

The Departed features some heroic IA guys. It's a Scorcese film, so it's way gritty.

[Adam Reynolds]

So now Trump lies about the location of aircraft carriers but leaks the location of submarines off the coast of Korea. Which is sort of the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do with those two things.

As a rather disturbing move, he also praised anti-drug efforts in the Philippines(not that this was the first time he did so). The same ones that have killed 7,000 people, with President Duterte making a direct reference to the Holocaust in a positive light.

A nice source that includes a full transcript of their phone call is The Intercept, but it is far too long to quote.

The Departed features some heroic IA guys. It's a Scorcese film, so it's way gritty.

You mean the heroic IA officer(Mark Whalburg) that commits a murder? Actually it was Matt Damon's character who was the internal affairs officer, even though he was also the mob's mole in contrast to Leo DiCaprio's undercover cop.

There are only a couple examples I can think of that are played as heroic, and even those have problems. In fact one of the most common portrayals is that the IA officers themselves are the corrupt ones. At best they are often an annoyance to the protagonist.

Street Kings features Hugh Laurie as an LAPD IA captain, who has an elaborate plan in which he manipulates Keneau Reeves' cowboy cop into taking down a ring of corrupt cops, instead of taking them down properly with a detailed investigation.

Michael Connelly's novels feature the only specifically heroic character that I can think of, with IA Detective Mendenhall saving the protagonist, homicide detective Bosch, twice. Though she is still something of a quasi-antagonist as well, and every other interaction Bosch has with IA is extremely negative. While in most of those cases Bosch himself has broken the rules, and the narrative doesn't always totally justify his actions, it is still a case of a force that opposes his quest towards justice for murder victims.

[houser2112]

Though not IA, Sgt. Exley in LA Confidential is a straitlaced cop who takes action against corrupt cops in the LAPD.

[Civil War Man]

In another case of not being IA, but fitting the bill for a movie about a cop doing the right thing, there's also Serpico.

[mr friendly guy]

Trump shoves Montenegro's PM out the way to get in the front of the group

http://www.news.com.au/technology/onlin ... 2e24e2efa9

Donald Trump shoves NATO leader Montenegro Prime Minister Duško Markovic
DONALD Trump has been ridiculed on social media after he shoved past a prime minister to get to the front of a group.

DONALD Trump has been ridiculed on social media for appearing to push Montenegro Prime Minister Dusko Markovic out of the way to get to the front of a group of NATO leaders.
Video shows Mr Trump placing his right hand on Mr Markovic’s arm and pushing himself ahead in the pack.
It got the attention of the other leaders, who watched as he adjusted his jacket with a seemingly smug smile on his face after the incident.
Mr Markovic did not make any comment.

You can watch the video (this seems like out of a Hollywood movie minus the facial close up) and read the rest of the article. And he does have a smug smile on his face.

Ah Trump, putting America first.

[Adam Reynolds]

Though not IA, Sgt. Exley in LA Confidential is a straitlaced cop who takes action against corrupt cops in the LAPD.

Yet he outright murders the corrupt police captain, not to mention that he also relies on the overly aggressive Detective White.

In another case of not being IA, but fitting the bill for a movie about a cop doing the right thing, there's also Serpico.

Probably the only real example that works. Especially given that it was true.

As for Trump, I wish I could call that surprising.

[Simon_Jester]

A bit of googling shows that J. K. Rowling came up with a delightful tweet about Trump, saying simply: "You tiny, tiny, tiny little man."

[Highlord Laan]

A bit of googling shows that J. K. Rowling came up with a delightful tweet about Trump, saying simply: "You tiny, tiny, tiny little man."

Well the Orange Baboon does make a good stand-in for Minister Fudge.

[Lost Soal]

A google translate version of Der Spiegel regarding Trumps meeting with the EU President calling the Germans either very bad or very evil for having a trade surplus and STILL not understanding how trade agreements work

Spiegel.de

Trump in Brussels "The Germans are evil, very evil"

At the meeting with the EU leaders Donald Trump has criticized massive criticism of Germany. The SPIEGEL learned from the circle of participants the exact wording.

US President Donald Trump has complained bitterly about the German trade surplus on his meeting with the EU top in Brussels. "The Germans are bad, very bad," said Trump. This was learned by the SPIEGEL from participants in the meeting.

Trump said, "Look at the millions of cars they sell in the US, and we'll stop that."

At the meeting, EU Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker took the side of the Germans and disagreed with Trumps Schelte. Free trade is a good thing for all, said the Commissioner. Juncker had tried a friendly tone, but was hard on the matter, says the participants.

At about an hour's meeting, Trump first met with President Donald Tusk and Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker, after about 45 minutes, other members of the European Parliament came, including the President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani and the EU's chief diplomat Federica Mogherini. (An analysis of the meeting can be found here .)

According to a report from the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", the EU side was horrified at the extent of the Americans' lack of awareness of trade policy. Apparently, it was unclear to the guests that the EU countries concluded trade agreements only jointly. Trumps economic consultant Gary Cohn is said to have said in the conversation between the US and Germany tariff tariffs other than between the USA and Belgium.

Germany has been exporting more than it has introduced for years. Trump had already made the German surplus on the subject earlier, and the President had already expressed his critical opinion in an interview with the Bild newspaper. "I would say to BMW if they want to build a factory in Mexico and sell cars to the US without a 35 percent tax, they can forget that" Trump said at the time. Since then, there has been a threat of a criminal tax in the room.

The new US president feels the German surplus is unfair because of the fact that trade deficits are elsewhere, he is particularly thinking about the US. The federal government is also under pressure within the EU because of the trade surplus. Lastly, Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) had described the surplus as too high in the SPIEGEL interview.

It was actually thought in the EU, after countless meetings of European leaders with Trump and many attempts to explain the international trade policy. This hope may well bury the Europeans.

[Patroklos]

So now Trump lies about the location of aircraft carriers but leaks the location of submarines off the coast of Korea. Which is sort of the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do with those two things.

*Le sigh*

You guys are so easy to troll these days.

http://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=100072

Note the date on that official Navy press release.

There is nothing out of the ordinary about mentioning the general geographic area of where ships are because one of the primary purpose of having ships overseas is presence. The Navy routinely announces the make up of CSGs and other fleet units and their general are of operations because one 1.) Its impossible to keep secret anyway and 2.) we WANT potential enemies to know we are just offshore waiting to wreck their day in short order.

[Simon_Jester]

So now Trump lies about the location of aircraft carriers but leaks the location of submarines off the coast of Korea. Which is sort of the exact opposite of what you are supposed to do with those two things.

*Le sigh*

You guys are so easy to troll these days.

The thing is, we've got the White House doing stuff that is objectively terrible, virtually every day.

President fires guy who runs investigations on him. President randomly dumps TS:SCI information to the Russians in the Oval Office in a meeting a TASS photographer can attend, but American media can't. President randomly lashes out on Twitter calling celebrities no-talent for making fun of him. President completely fails to even comprehend basic facts about negotiating with the EU. President delivers two or three mutually contradictory claims about the same firing decision within 24-48 hours, including one that makes it blatantly obvious that he told White House staff to lie on his behalf, then didn't even have the attention span to remember his own damn lie! President runs a private email server, not part of the government networks, which is a terrible thing, right?

Any one of these things would be at least a major gaffe, sometimes a larger scandal, under a normal presidency. And they are happening every damn day.

In that kind of environment, it is very easy to take a stack of twenty "Trump done fucked up" incidents, slip a single fake "Trump fucked up" incident into the stack, and have people not notice the one fake among a stack of twenty real ones.

In other words, Democrats are this easy to troll because Trump is a garbage fire of a presidency. A guy whose head is at least vaguely attached to his shoulders (say, McCain or Romney) would not be creating this kind of problem, by not being such a goddamn corrupt asshole idiot.

[Thanas]

So Trump is in Brussels. What is the number one thing he mentions? Refuge crisis? Better relations? No....it is about the difficulty of setting up golf courses in Europe. So. Much. Winning..

[Thanas]

How to behave at a diplomatic summit:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/vid ... call-video

[Sea Skimmer]

So Trump is in Brussels. What is the number one thing he mentions? Refuge crisis? Better relations? No....it is about the difficulty of setting up golf courses in Europe. So. Much. Winning..

The Red Communist Chinese are against golf courses, which shows how integral they clearly are to total western victory. Plus as seen in the Republic of Korea they make excellent imprompto strategic defense sites, so logically European security could be greatly enhanced by building new ones!

[Pelranius]

A google translate version of Der Spiegel regarding Trumps meeting with the EU President calling the Germans either very bad or very evil for having a trade surplus and STILL not understanding how trade agreements work

Spiegel.de

Trump in Brussels "The Germans are evil, very evil"

At the meeting with the EU leaders Donald Trump has criticized massive criticism of Germany. The SPIEGEL learned from the circle of participants the exact wording.

US President Donald Trump has complained bitterly about the German trade surplus on his meeting with the EU top in Brussels. "The Germans are bad, very bad," said Trump. This was learned by the SPIEGEL from participants in the meeting.

Trump said, "Look at the millions of cars they sell in the US, and we'll stop that."

At the meeting, EU Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker took the side of the Germans and disagreed with Trumps Schelte. Free trade is a good thing for all, said the Commissioner. Juncker had tried a friendly tone, but was hard on the matter, says the participants.

At about an hour's meeting, Trump first met with President Donald Tusk and Commissioner Jean-Claude Juncker, after about 45 minutes, other members of the European Parliament came, including the President of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani and the EU's chief diplomat Federica Mogherini. (An analysis of the meeting can be found here .)

According to a report from the "Süddeutsche Zeitung", the EU side was horrified at the extent of the Americans' lack of awareness of trade policy. Apparently, it was unclear to the guests that the EU countries concluded trade agreements only jointly. Trumps economic consultant Gary Cohn is said to have said in the conversation between the US and Germany tariff tariffs other than between the USA and Belgium.

Germany has been exporting more than it has introduced for years. Trump had already made the German surplus on the subject earlier, and the President had already expressed his critical opinion in an interview with the Bild newspaper. "I would say to BMW if they want to build a factory in Mexico and sell cars to the US without a 35 percent tax, they can forget that" Trump said at the time. Since then, there has been a threat of a criminal tax in the room.

The new US president feels the German surplus is unfair because of the fact that trade deficits are elsewhere, he is particularly thinking about the US. The federal government is also under pressure within the EU because of the trade surplus. Lastly, Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU) had described the surplus as too high in the SPIEGEL interview.

It was actually thought in the EU, after countless meetings of European leaders with Trump and many attempts to explain the international trade policy. This hope may well bury the Europeans.

Cheetos Fuhrer does realize that a lot of those millions of German cars are built by American workers, of whom at least some voted for him?

[Flagg]

I wonder what the reactions would be regarding military secrets (whether they are still made up of valid information or not) if Barack Obama were the one mentioning them at public events. Well, not really, he'd be called an Arabic Candidate out to destroy the country from within.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah.

I would love to have a pipeline over to a parallel universe where Obama did roughly what Trump did on the military secrets. Or, conversely, where Clinton did it.

[Batman]

US politics. Even if it's illegal, it's only wrong if a Democrat does it. If a Democrat does it, it's wrong even if it's legal.

[FaxModem1]

New York Times

Russian Once Tied to Trump Aide Seeks Immunity to Cooperate With Congress
By BARRY MEIER and JESSE DRUCKERMAY 26, 2017
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Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir V. Putin, in Davos, Switzerland, last year. Credit Simon Dawson/Bloomberg
Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch once close to President Trump’s former campaign manager, has offered to cooperate with congressional committees investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, but lawmakers are unwilling to accept his conditions, according to congressional officials.

Mr. Deripaska’s offer comes amid increased attention to his ties to Paul Manafort, who is one of several Trump associates under F.B.I. scrutiny for possible collusion with Russia during the presidential campaign. The two men did business together in the mid-2000s, when Mr. Manafort, a Republican operative, was also providing campaign advice to Kremlin-backed politicians in Ukraine. Their relationship subsequently soured and devolved into a lawsuit.

Mr. Deripaska, an aluminum magnate who is a member of the inner circle of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, recently offered to cooperate with congressional intelligence committees in exchange for a grant of full immunity, according to three congressional officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the issue publicly. But the Senate and House panels turned him down because of concerns that immunity agreements create complications for federal criminal investigators, the officials said.

Mr. Deripaska, who lives in Moscow, has long had difficulty traveling to the United States. The State Department has refused to issue him a business visa because of concerns over allegations that he was connected to organized crime, according to a former United States government official, which Mr. Deripaska has denied.

Photo

Mr. Deripaska, left, with President Putin in Yaroslavl, Russia, last year. Credit Dmitry Azarov/Kommersant, via Getty Images
But he was able to enter the country in another way during that period, according to previously undisclosed court documents. Mr. Deripaska came to the United States eight times between 2011 and 2014 with government permission as a Russian diplomat, according to affidavits he gave in a little-noticed lawsuit in a Manhattan court. Mr. Deripaska said in the court papers that his visits were brief and made in connection with meetings of the G-20 and the United Nations, not to conduct business.

Continue reading the main story
The Trump White House
The historic moments, head-spinning developments and inside-the-White House intrigue.
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MAY 26
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The court documents and public records show that Mr. Deripaska, whose companies have long had offices in New York, has expanded his American holdings over the past 10 years, buying high-priced Manhattan townhouses and a major stake in a Russian-language newspaper in New York.

The lawsuit was brought by Alexander Gliklad, a Russian-born businessman, who charged that Mr. Deripaska had used his diplomatic status as a cover to do business, which the oligarch denied. Mr. Gliklad claims he is entitled to collect funds that Mr. Deripaska had agreed to pay to settle a lawsuit with a man who owed Mr. Gliklad money from a court judgment. Last month, a New York State Supreme Court justice rejected Mr. Gliklad’s argument that the Manhattan court had jurisdiction over Mr. Deripaska.

As Mr. Manafort’s dealings with Russia-friendly Ukrainian politicians, business activities and loans have come under examination in recent months, his former client has gotten caught up in the media scrutiny. The two men were partners in an offshore fund set up in 2007 to buy telecommunications and cable television assets in Ukraine, where Mr. Manafort had advised then-President Viktor F. Yanukovych. That deal fell apart, winding up in litigation in the Cayman Islands.

Photo

Paul Manafort spoke to reporters after a night at the Republican National Convention in July 2016 in Cleveland. Mr. Manafort is under F.B.I. scrutiny; he conducted business with Mr. Deripaska in the mid-2000s. Credit Sam Hodgson for The New York Times
In March, Mr. Deripaska took out newspaper ads stating that he was willing to participate in hearings before Congress after The Associated Press published a report alleging that Mr. Manafort had provided him with a plan in 2005 outlining steps to “greatly benefit the Putin government,” by influencing politics and news coverage in the United States. Mr. Deripaska has denied ever entering into such an arrangement and sued The A.P. for libel last month. The news organization has said it stands by its article. Mr. Manafort has denied that his work for the oligarch was aimed at aiding the Russian government.

There are no indications thus far that the F.B.I. is seeking to interview Mr. Deripaska as part of the continuing investigation into Russian interference in the presidential election.

Lawyers at the firm representing Mr. Deripaska in the libel action did not respond to a request for comment about his offer to cooperate with congressional investigators. Adam Waldman, a Washington lobbyist representing Mr. Deripaska, did not respond to an email seeking comment.

For years, Mr. Putin complained about the State Department’s refusal to issue Mr. Deripaska a visa. “They give us nothing, explain to us nothing, and forbid him from entry,” Mr. Putin told the French newspaper Le Monde in 2008.

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It is considered difficult to deny diplomatic visas to people carrying the proper credentials issued by their own countries. A State Department spokesman, William B. Cocks, said he could not discuss individual visa issues, citing confidentiality. But speaking generally, he said diplomats coming to the United States received a special visa while foreigners doing business in this country needed a business visa.

The timing of Mr. Deripaska’s diplomatic visits to the United States are notable because they began after the F.B.I. withdrew from a secret deal that allowed him into the country. In 2008, the F.B.I., over State Department objections, arranged for him to receive a special visa after he agreed to help the bureau find a retired agent, Robert Levinson, who had disappeared in Iran the year before. F.B.I. officials ended the deal in 2009 after concluding that the arrangement was not fruitful, according to former officials at the bureau.

He sought to get a visa in 2015 to testify in the Manhattan court case, according to court filings, but the State Department refused to issue him one.

Mr. Deripaska, whose net worth has been estimated at $5.3 billion by Forbes, has global business interests and sits atop a number of companies, including United Company Rusal and Basic Element, which includes businesses ranging from agriculture to aviation to automobiles.

According to filings in the Manhattan lawsuit, Mr. Deripaska’s investments in the United States over the past decade include two Manhattan townhouses bought through shell companies owned by a British Virgin Islands trust. Records show one of those properties, in Greenwich Village, was purchased in 2006 for $4.5 million; the other building, on the Upper East Side, was bought two years later for $42.5 million. In 2014, he acquired a 50 percent stake in the largest Russian-language newspaper in the United States, V Novom Svete, or In The New World, located in Lower Manhattan, court filings state.

He also agreed to “support” a hedge fund run by the former president of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, by investing in it through an offshore shell company, according to one filing. Through his assistant, Mr. Wolfensohn declined to comment. A spokesman in Moscow for one of Mr. Deripaska’s companies did not respond to questions about the business dealings.

Michael S. Schmidt and Matthew Rosenberg contributed reporting.

[Thanas]

Russians discussed setting up secret communication channel with Trump campaign, using Jared Kushner.

Winning with Russians

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington allegedly discussed setting up a secret communications channel to cloak contacts between Moscow and Donald Trump’s White House transition team, it was reported on Friday.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that he and Kushner discussed ways to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, the Washington Post said, citing US officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Trump’s son-in-law made the proposal at a meeting in early December at Trump Tower in New York, weeks before Trump was sworn in, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by the US officials, the paper said.

Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, also allegedly attended the meeting.

Now imagine the shitstorm if Clinton had asked for a secret channel to a foreign adversary.

[Flagg]

Russians discussed setting up secret communication channel with Trump campaign, using Jared Kushner.

Winning with Russians

Jared Kushner and Russia’s ambassador to Washington allegedly discussed setting up a secret communications channel to cloak contacts between Moscow and Donald Trump’s White House transition team, it was reported on Friday.

Ambassador Sergei Kislyak told his superiors in Moscow that he and Kushner discussed ways to shield their pre-inauguration discussions from monitoring, the Washington Post said, citing US officials briefed on intelligence reports.

Trump’s son-in-law made the proposal at a meeting in early December at Trump Tower in New York, weeks before Trump was sworn in, according to intercepts of Russian communications that were reviewed by the US officials, the paper said.

Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, also allegedly attended the meeting.

Now imagine the shitstorm if Clinton had asked for a secret channel to a foreign adversary.

It's only wrong when Democrats do it, don't you know anything?

I'm glad that we're actually starting to move towards concrete evidence of collusion with Russia.

[Thanas]

So the reviews of Trump foreign policy trip are in. They can be roughly characterised as "big dumb clown tour".

First for Nato:

For once, Trump stays silent about Nato unity – and US allies are disappointed

Donald Trump’s failure to make an explicit commitment to Nato’s article 5, the mutual defence obligation at the heart of the alliance, has prolonged the uncertainty among US allies about Washington’s intentions.

Both the US press and the diplomatic corps in Washington had been primed to expect some clear language showing that the president believed in the principle of collective defence, that an attack on one is an attack against all. Trump has hitherto indicated that US preparedness to come to the defence of an ally might be dependent on how much that ally spends on its military. He had gone as far as calling the alliance “obsolete”, although he has since said that ceased to apply since he became president.

Against that background, administration officials were briefed ahead of Trump’s long-awaited speech at Nato’s new headquarters that it would have clear vocabulary on the issue.

The anticipation made the disappointment on Thursday all the greater. There was reference in the text to “never forsaking friends” and unnamed White House officials, speaking anonymously, insisted that US commitment to article 5 went without saying.

But for allies – especially on Europe’s borderlands in the shadow of an increasingly assertive Russia – it does not go without saying. They needed to hear it from the president’s own lips and they did not.

Like criticism of Vladimir Putin, a clear commitment to Nato’s collective security remains something that Trump allows his officials to express without ever quite saying the words himself. The doggedness of his refusal to use language that has been commonplace for earlier US administrations, has added force to widespread, persistent reports that Moscow has some form of leverage on the president.

“After calling Nato ‘obsolete’ Trump needed to say what every predecessor since Truman has said: the US is committed to article 5. He didn’t. This is a major blow to the alliance,” a former US ambassador to Nato, Ivo Daalder, wrote in a series of tweets immediately after the speech.

Daalder also pointed out that Trump only briefly mentioned Russia in talking about Nato’s mission, spending much more time on counter-terrorism and immigration. It was unclear what role he expected Nato to play in immigration management.

“Trump’s first Nato meeting was an opportunity to unite the alliance,” Daalder concluded. “Unfortunately, Nato today is more divided than ever.”

It may be have been a coincidence, but it was certainly appeared symbolic, that the leader Trump roughly pushed aside to get to the front row for a Nato photo-opp was Duško Marković, the prime minister of Montenegro, due to become a full member next month, despite a sustained Moscow-backed campaign to prevent that happening. The campaign included an abortive coup attempt.

The dominant tone of Trump’s Nato speech was scolding. He returned to his campaign mantra on Nato, berating US allies of not “paying their dues” to the alliance, suggesting they were in arrears for past years. The vocabulary showed a persistent ignorance about how the alliance works.

In 2014, member states vowed to increase their military spending to 2% of GDP. Most of the 28 allies have not reached that goal yet, and are undoubtedly dragging their heels but the deadline for doing so is 2024. There are no arrears.

Not for the first time, the president was accused of being tone deaf to the backdrop to his speech. In Brussels, he was standing alongside a piece of the World Trade Centre wreckage.

“Trump’s remarks showed terrible timing,” said Jorge Benitez, a senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Centre on International Security. “It is one thing to urge Nato allies to increase defense spending during the private meeting, but it was disgraceful to bring it up in the dedication of a memorial honoring the solidarity of our allies with the US after 9/11. This was a solemn moment to show appreciation for the lives our Nato allies lost fighting for the US, not the time to talk about money.”

Thomas Wright, the director of the Centre on United States and Europe and the Brookings Institution, described the Nato leg of Trump’s European tour as “a policy failure of epic proportions” that “increases the risk that Putin will test him in the years ahead.”

It was not just the words. Trump’s body language (including his shoving of Markovic and his macho hand wrestling with Emmanuel Macron) showed him to be ill at ease among this gathering of allies, especially compared to his evident delight at being flattered by the Saudi royal family. It certainly suggested that gilded palaces and absolute rule were more his scene.

Then, on to EU:

Trump getting pissed at being ignored in favor of Merkel, responds by wrenching arm out of socket. Winning at making friends

Merkel, Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg and several others responded with open, if disbelieving, laughter. The Europeans appeared even more startled when Trump shoved aside the prime minister of Montenegro, Dusko Markovic, to get to the front of the family photo.

The US president barrelled his way through the group before drawing himself up to his full height, snapping his jacket together and striking a truculent pose – prompting the writer JK Rowling to caption a tweeted GIF of the incident with the words, “You tiny, tiny, tiny little man.”


[...]


The Belgian daily Le Soir reported that while eating “a lot” of “the best” chocolates, Trump revealed to prime minister Charles Michel that his frequent criticisms of the EU were due largely to his personal experiences trying to set up businesses there.

“Every time we talked about a country, he remembered the things he had done,” one source told the paper. “Scotland? He said he had opened a club. Ireland? He said it took him two-and-a-half years to get a licence and that did not give him a very good image of the EU.”

Besides reportedly telling EU leaders the Germans were “bad, very bad” on trade, Trump and his team shocked the Europeans by their ignorance of the bloc’s trade policy, according to Süddeutsche Zeitung, repeatedly suggesting America had different trade deals with Germany and Belgium.

And the US president appeared at least once to deny his own words. A French official told AP that having publicly described the far right’s Marine Le Pen as “the strongest” candidate in France’s presidential election, he told Macron on Thursday “you were my guy” in the vote.

More at the link.


This was the most polite review I could find:

So much winning.

Trump's big trip began well – but in Europe his flaws were painfully exposed

Once he reached Brussels, Trump seemed to abandon Obama’s foreign policy rule of ‘don’t do stupid shit’, and his inability to work by consensus was stark




Trump left the US under the shadow of a wide-ranging investigation into contacts between his aides and Russia before and after the November presidential election. In his absence from Washington, that shadow has only grown longer and darker.

The latest in the string of daily developments was a report on Friday night that Jared Kushner asked the Russians to set up a secret channel of communication with the Trump transition team, bypassing US diplomatic and intelligence channels. It was a stunning revelation, given that Kushner is not just the president’s son-in-law but his closest foreign policy adviser. When Trump met Israeli prime minster Benjamin Netanyahu, for example, Kushner was in the room but national security adviser HR McMaster was left outside.

The White House’s primary aim for the tour was to achieve Barack Obama’s touchstone goal: “Don’t do stupid shit.” For a few days, that seemed to work. The Saudi and Israeli legs of the trip were tightly controlled, Trump stuck to his scripted remarks, and the president made his keynote counter-terrorism speech in Riyadh in a deliberate and determined manner.

It was only when Air Force One reached Brussels that the caravan began to lose its way. That was perhaps inevitable for both policy and personal reasons. With King Salman and Netanyahu, there was a shared list of priorities and talking points: a view that Iran was a primary enemy, the desirability of huge US arms contracts, denunciations of terrorism. Trump was the centre of attention, literally treated like royalty and assured the things he did and said were “historic”.

In Europe, Trump had to play a different role: a senior member of a group seeking to act in concert and by consensus. But Trump does not do collegial, a fact that was grasped before in Europe but is now viscerally understood after the president shoved the Montenegrin prime minister out of the way to get front and centre of a Nato leaders’ photo-op. It was demonstrated again at the G7, when he did not even bother to put on headphones to hear the speeches of his fellow world leaders, including his Italian host.

These are the ways of a man without curiosity. He does not read books, and listens fitfully and reluctantly to others. He is reportedly fed up with McMaster because he goes on for too long about world affairs. The briefing papers McMaster’s team drew up before this trip had to be condensed to a few bullet points on a single page for each issue, and even then Trump grew bored of reviewing them before departure, and groused about how long the whole excursion would take.

The lack of preparation began to show when he reached Brussels. At Nato, his prepared remarks at a 9/11 monument were largely a retread of his campaign speech about the alliance, which in turn was constructed around a misunderstanding of how it works. He accused the US allies gathered alongside him (in the shadow of a shattered fragment of the World Trade Center) of being deadbeats who had not paid their club dues.

In terms of the common expenses of running Nato headquarters and infrastructure, this was simply not true. When it comes to the goal of Nato members spending 2% of their GDP on defence, the deadline is 2024, and the European allies have been increasing their expenditure since the Russian annexation of Crimea. And they have been contributing in other ways, including by way of blood and human lives in Afghanistan.

Trump’s denunciation of the Germans at a European Union meeting for being “bad, very bad,” because of the large number of German brand cars sold in the US, showed his comprehension of the global auto trade was just as shaky. The vast majority of German cars sold in the US are made there by American workers. For example, the BMW plant in South Carolina is the company’s largest anywhere in the world. It is also the biggest exporter of cars from the US.

Trump lack of grasp of the realities of geopolitical alliances and global trade is a reminder that he came to office at the age of 70, having spent his entire adult life in a single business, real estate – a business he inherited, and which was built on bluster, gaming the legal system and forming partnerships of convenience with equally ruthless operators.

By the time they reach three score and ten, people generally do not change their ways, and Trump’s grand tour has served a reminder of that. He has not suddenly transcended the world of real estate to become a statesman. He is just going about the work of a president as if it is an extension of his real estate business.

To the Belgian prime minister, he explained his antipathy to the EU because of obstacles he met while trying to send up golf courses in Europe. The same failure to adapt is likely to be a big factor in the Trump family’s troubles with Russia. Both the president and Kushner have grown up going from one deal to another, looking for finance wherever it came from, in secret when necessary.

They evidently assumed affairs of state could be conducted in the same way. What is yet to be proven, but which should become clearer once they return to the US to face further investigation, is whether they will be proved wrong in that assumption, or whether the United States will be suborned and remade in the image of the Trump Organisation.

Also: WTF. The National security advisor is being pushed aside in favor of Jared Kushner? Trump does not even read the bullet points? The National security advisor is not even in the room when trump discusses things about national security?

Who wants to bet those leaks came from McMaster or someone close to him and that McMaster will resign soon?

[Flagg]

I hate clowns, but describing Trump as a clown is insulting to clowns.

But honestly, I have a feeling that the beltway media will spin this favorably for President Predator the same way they spun Palin getting whomped by Biden in the 2008 VP debate as a victory for the Half-Governor simply because she didn't shit her panties while at the podium.

And of course any negative articles will be dismissed as "fake news".

[Simon_Jester]

I'm not so sure.

See, the Beltway media is fundamentally an establishment faction. The reason they're so reluctant to criticize the established political parties is because of a combination of needing/wanting "access" to powerful politicians, plus a degree of Stockholm Syndrome: they've worked with the current type of politician so long their bad behaviors appear 'normal.'

However, this is to some extent a quid pro quo. Reporters are kind to congressmen, but congressmen are expected to answer reporters' questions and not punch them in the face. Think tank intellectuals write long rambling posts on why the president's latest screwup is actually part of a cunning plan, but the president hires think tank intellectuals for cushy cabinet positions and invites them to parties.

Trump pisses all over this establishment and hands important jobs to random cronies. He doesn't listen to or respect the talking-head intelligentsia. He's like... Alexandra Petri put it well.

"The Trump presidency is the discovery that what you thought was a man in a bear suit is just a bear. Suddenly the fact that he wouldn’t play by the rules makes total sense. It wasn’t that he refused to, that he was playing a long game. It was that he was a wild animal who eats fish and climbs trees, and English words were totally unintelligible to him. In retrospect, you should have suspected that after he just straight-up ate a guy."

Trump isn't someone you can ally with for power, because he has no concept of sharing power. At most he's willing to delegate power, and he views the men (virtually always men) he delegates it to as expendable minions, not as allies or supporters in the usual sense. You can't ally with him for personal benefit, because he's too erratic, immature, and isolated from networks of helpful contacts to provide much in the way of benefits. And you can't ally with him to gain access to 'the best people' in the DC power structure, because his inner circle consists of random idiots he brought in from outside that power structure.

Thus, being generous to him and pretending he's NOT fucking up is pointless, unless you are specifically part of a media organization created for the express purpose of spreading right-wing propaganda.

I think more and more of the normally right-wing-sympathizers in Washington are coming around to this point of view. It's happening slowly because of the sheer density of partisan armor slabbed onto Washington's institutions, but it's happening.

[Flagg]

I'm not so sure.

See, the Beltway media is fundamentally an establishment faction. The reason they're so reluctant to criticize the established political parties is because of a combination of needing/wanting "access" to powerful politicians, plus a degree of Stockholm Syndrome: they've worked with the current type of politician so long their bad behaviors appear 'normal.'

However, this is to some extent a quid pro quo. Reporters are kind to congressmen, but congressmen are expected to answer reporters' questions and not punch them in the face. Think tank intellectuals write long rambling posts on why the president's latest screwup is actually part of a cunning plan, but the president hires think tank intellectuals for cushy cabinet positions and invites them to parties.

Trump pisses all over this establishment and hands important jobs to random cronies. He doesn't listen to or respect the talking-head intelligentsia. He's like... Alexandra Petri put it well.

"The Trump presidency is the discovery that what you thought was a man in a bear suit is just a bear. Suddenly the fact that he wouldn’t play by the rules makes total sense. It wasn’t that he refused to, that he was playing a long game. It was that he was a wild animal who eats fish and climbs trees, and English words were totally unintelligible to him. In retrospect, you should have suspected that after he just straight-up ate a guy."

Trump isn't someone you can ally with for power, because he has no concept of sharing power. At most he's willing to delegate power, and he views the men (virtually always men) he delegates it to as expendable minions, not as allies or supporters in the usual sense. You can't ally with him for personal benefit, because he's too erratic, immature, and isolated from networks of helpful contacts to provide much in the way of benefits. And you can't ally with him to gain access to 'the best people' in the DC power structure, because his inner circle consists of random idiots he brought in from outside that power structure.

Thus, being generous to him and pretending he's NOT fucking up is pointless, unless you are specifically part of a media organization created for the express purpose of spreading right-wing propaganda.

I think more and more of the normally right-wing-sympathizers in Washington are coming around to this point of view. It's happening slowly because of the sheer density of partisan armor slabbed onto Washington's institutions, but it's happening.

I think you're right in the long run, but remember roughly 2 months ago they fawned over him after he ordered an air strike on dirt and runway in response to an alleged (or confirmed, I haven't seen anything about it and I'm not carrying water for the Syrian dictator) chemical weapons attack by Assad. The beltway media is more like an abused spouse that goes back to their abuser convinced that this time they really mean it when they say sorry and promise never to do it again.

That said, there will be a breaking point barring a large scale terrorist attack on American soil.