Trump lacks the savvy and skill needed to cope with North Korea or Russia
On Thursday, President Trump spent yet another day embarrassing the United States on the international stage. Yes, he gave a pretty good speech before a Polish crowd in Warsaw in which he pledged to defend the values of the West. But then, in a news conference with the Polish president, he proved he was not serious about that pledge.
As Trump stood before the television cameras, he repeated his oft-stated contention that “nobody knows” who hacked the American presidential election, even though U.S. intelligence agencies and most members of Congress know for a fact it was the Russians. He then went on to rail against the free press with his tiresome blather about “fake news.” He even wondered aloud why NBC is not nicer to him since he made them a bunch of money as host of “The Apprentice.”
This nonsense is getting old and boring and it would be a relief if it could simply be ignored, but, of course, Trump’s wayward words have consequences — especially because, today, he is meeting for the first time with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. If Trump actually cared about the West, or at least about his own country, he would be putting Putin on notice that attacks on America’s democracy will not go unpunished. Trump, though, cannot separate in his mind the proven Russian meddling from his obsession with his clouded victory over Hillary Clinton. Thus locked in his own delusion, he is unlikely to make an issue of the election hack with Putin.
Instead, we can expect Putin to play to Trump’s self-absorption. It will not be a shock if Trump lumbers out of the session with the cagey Russian proclaiming he has found a new best friend. That is more or less what he did after hosting China’s President Xi Jinping at his Mar-a-Lago resort in April. Back then, Trump made himself look foolish by announcing that, after being schooled by Xi for 10 minutes, it dawned on him that the situation with North Korea is really complicated. Maybe he should have read a book or talked to someone in the State Department before he met with Xi, like a normal president. Reportedly, Trump is going into the meeting with Putin just as untutored, with no agenda at all.
While Trump is galumphing around Hamburg meeting with world leaders who laugh behind his back, the wild man who runs North Korea as his own private dungeon is reveling in his latest affront to America. On the Fourth of July, Kim Jong Un’s military shot off its first test of a missile that could hit U.S. soil.
In response, Trump fired of a couple of tweets. One said it is “hard to believe South Korea and Japan will put up with this much longer.” The other suggested that “Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all.”
The apprentice president must think the cake he served Xi at Mar-a-Lago — “The most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen,” Trump bragged at the time — persuaded the Chinese president to dump his impetuous ally, Kim. It ain’t gonna happen.
North Korea is China’s East Germany. The Chinese government does not want to see a united Korean peninsula that is tied closely to the U.S. It perceives that the fall of Kim might very well lead to instability in China. And, the truth is, there is a large faction within Chinese ruling circles who believe anything that is bad for the U.S. is good for China. As a result, they don’t really mind that North Korea is presenting Trump with a thorny problem that has no good solution.
China’s leadership will do what is in China’s interest and they are still far from putting “a heavy move” on Kim. They cannot be expected to go out of their way to help a president whose tough talk dissipates as soon as an autocrat from afar gets him in a room and flatters his ego.
In his Warsaw speech — for once reading from a prepared text instead of winging it — Trump told the crowd, ”The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive.” Actually, the more pertinent question, just now, is whether Trump has the attention span and the brainpower required to be the leader of the West. So far, in the judgment of the international community, the answer is a resounding no.
UPDATE: Recently, the Associated Press reported that Environmental Protection Agency Director Scott Pruitt met with Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris shortly before Pruitt’s agency reversed a ban on a chemical manufactured by Dow that has been shown to be harmful to children’s brains. That report was the basis for two sentences in my column on July 2 that drew the inference that the meeting between Pruitt and Liveris may have affected the EPA’s decision.
Now, the AP reports that Rachelle Schikorra, a spokeswoman for Dow, said the formal meeting “never happened due to schedule conflicts.” Pruitt and Liveris did have “a brief introduction in passing,” according to an EPA statement, but “no substantive issues were discussed.”
I am glad the AP updated their report and I regret that I formed an opinion based on what appears to be a mistaken account. The broader argument made in my column that Pruitt has dramatically shifted the EPA in a direction favorable to industry remains inarguable. Neither fans nor foes of Pruitt would disagree with that.
Follow me at @davidhorsey on Twitter
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