{"id":33063,"date":"2018-07-12T12:43:05","date_gmt":"2018-07-12T19:43:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=33063"},"modified":"2018-07-12T12:43:05","modified_gmt":"2018-07-12T19:43:05","slug":"trump-the-fool","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2018\/07\/12\/trump-the-fool\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump the Fool!"},"content":{"rendered":"

The only way to to graph Trump’s foreign policy performance is as an asymptotic equation approaching infinitely bad.  His horrid example at NATO fits that pattern.  He is doing everything inhumanly possible to alienate every friend we have.  And he claims victories to describe his failures.<\/font><\/p>\n

\n

\"0712trump_embarrassment\"<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump took to the stage in Belgium to crow about how he scored a major foreign relations victory in getting NATO allies to increase their military budgets\u2014by questioning the value of NATO and threatening to leave the vital military alliance. However, other NATO leaders are already disputing Trump\u2019s statements, making his \u201cvictory\u201d over NATO appear as illusory as his \u201cagreement\u201d with North Korea.<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

After two days in which Trump attacked multiple allies, particularly Germany, and denied that NATO had any value to the United States, Thursday morning he suddenly appeared to make an unscheduled speech, where he declared he has solved the problem of NATO<\/strong>.<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Trump<\/font><\/strong><\/span>: Yesterday I let them know that I was extremely unhappy with what was happening \u2026 They have substantially upped their commitment and now we\u2019re very happy and have a very, very  powerful, very, very strong NATO.<\/font><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

 <\/font><\/font><\/p>\n

Trump tweeted overnight that NATO countries had to up their military budgets \u201cimmediately,\u201d perhaps missing that bit where, in democratic nations, leaders don\u2019t have instant, unchecked power to make such commitments. But where Trump\u2019s appearance at last year\u2019s NATO fiasco could be passed off as Trump simply not understanding how the alliance worked or was financed, that was obviously not the case this time.<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, Trump set out to \u201csolve NATO\u201d as he solves every other problem. First create the problem, then pretend it\u2019s fixed. Then accept the applause. In this case, Trump didn\u2019t name any country that had upped its commitment to NATO, or point to any real change that had resulted in NATO now \u201crunning like a machine\u201d and being \u201cmuch stronger than it was two days ago.\u201d However, he did toss on more numbers about how much of Germany was controlled by Russia\u2014all of them simply invented.<\/strong><\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile, <\/font><\/font><\/span>the Washington Post reports<\/a><\/span><\/font><\/font><\/font> that other NATO leaders are already stepping forward to deny they\u2019ve changed their commitment for military spending<\/strong>… [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/font><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <Daily Kos<\/a>><\/font><\/p>\n

World, please be patient with us.  The American people who think are trying to undo Trump’s Republican Reich.  Whatever boycotts or sanctions you deem necessary, I ask for mercy to the people by targeting Trump’s assets.<\/font><\/p>\n

RESIST!!<\/font><\/font><\/h1>\n

VOTE BLUE!!<\/font><\/font><\/h1>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The only way to to graph Trump’s foreign policy performance is as an asymptotic equation approaching infinitely bad.  His horrid example at NATO fits that pattern.  He is doing everything inhumanly possible to alienate every friend we have.  And he claims victories to describe his failures. Donald Trump took to the stage in Belgium to […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}