Trump Did Not Represent the U.S. at the G-7

[babylonsister]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/trump-did-not-represent-us-g7.html

Trump Did Not Represent the U.S. at the G-7
His comments on Obama and Crimea show he has no national loyalty.
By William Saletan
Aug 27, 2019
9:26 PM


This week, at the G-7 meeting in France, President Donald Trump stood before the world and, for three horrifying minutes, displayed utter incomprehension of allegiance to the United States.

snip//

A patriotic president would regard a past affront to the United States as an affront to himself. Obama, for instance, saw the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, as an attack on his country, and therefore he authorized the operation that killed Osama Bin Laden. Trump lacks this sense of continuity. Like a child who thinks the world didn’t exist before his birth, Trump ignores events prior to his election. Since the assault on Crimea took place in 2014, Trump dismisses it as an offense against “President Obama, not … President Trump.” Trump doesn’t understand that he and Obama share a country and that he’s supposed to punish wrongs even if they occurred on his predecessor’s watch.

From this solipsistic standpoint, there are no national commitments. All commitments are personal and dispensable. “President Obama was helping Ukraine,” according to Trump, but that was Obama’s policy—not, in Trump’s view, an enduring promise by the United States. So Trump abandoned that commitment. He accepts Russia’s claim to Crimea, and he dismisses its suspension from the G-7 as a fit of pique by an embarrassed and now irrelevant former American president.

Look back at Trump’s recent comments, and you’ll see a pattern of indifference to national loyalty. A month ago, he told four American congresswomen—three of whom were born in the United States—to “go back” to the countries from which their families had emigrated. Two weeks ago, he urged a foreign nation, Israel, to deny entry to two of the four lawmakers. He argued that American Jews who supported the congresswomen were being disloyal to Israel. On Saturday, Trump defended the honesty of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, despite U.S. intelligence that shows Kim is faking denuclearization. In response to a question about French taxes on American technology companies, he grumbled that the companies were anti-Republican and might have cost him 15 million votes in 2016. As to China’s unfair trade practices, Trump concluded, “I don’t blame China. I blame our presidents, our representatives, past administrations, for allowing that to happen.”

Trump has been talking this way for years. He pretends to be a nationalist, but he doesn’t understand what a nation is. A nation makes enduring commitments. A nation preserves memories, principles, and obligations from one presidency to the next. A nation treats an attack on one as an attack on all. Trump believes in none of that. To him, every past president is a rival, and every adversary of those presidents—including Putin and Kim—is, by extension, an ally. Trump doesn’t go to gatherings of world leaders to represent the United States. He goes there to represent our enemies.

[RKP5637]

1. tRump, is an aggressive airhead!!! No idea WTF he's talking about or doing, than to trash the USA

and other presidents/leaders. He makes a damn fool of himself as a failed leader and consequently also of the USA since by hook or crook he got in.

[Kid Berwyn]

2. King Con did represent Putin and Russia very bigly.

The whole frigging time it was we need them to have a G-8 this and Obama got outsmarted that if only he had done whatever.

Saletan is spot-on. Drumpf has no idea what it means to be POTUS.