If Donald Trump had showed up at the United Nations General Assembly with a gas can and a blowtorch, he would not have been much more subtle about his disdain for all that the 80-year-old organization stands.
What the world saw was an hour-long, belligerent rant against internationalism, global immigration, the climate “hoax,” and the UN itself was a nails-on-blackboard, blanket dismissal of treaties, cooperation and empathy writ large.
His remarkably rambling, ugly remarks skewered friends and foes alike in a gush of self-preening and rude difference with predecessors that both played fast and loose with fact and showed Trump incapable of distinguishing among gripes personal, public or political. It was all one long gripe, as freed from solution as from validation.
By now, you’ve heard the themes: Europe and other countries are letting themselves rot over migration and dissolution of national culture, over politically correct adherence to the “con job” of climate concern from “stupid people,” and over the thought of doing anything that would not involve adherence to Trump’s own outlook. It was easy to read a subtext of pressure for continuous unregulated business development and billionaire investment.
He spent much of his time re-buttering his own bread to credit himself with dubious achievements at odds with the obvious realities: He has ended seven wars (to the surprise of some of the combatants), he has turned the world away from nuclear war by dropping heavy bombs on Iran’s development facilities, ended inflation and runaway prices at home and is righting the globe against the evils of wind- and solar-powered technology.
And he clearly believes delusionally that he is a free speech crusader despite threats to prosecute political enemies, and a force for law and order, even if it means putting troops on U.S. streets. Coal is clean in Trump world, it is soldiers being killed in Ukraine and Gaza, not civilians, the strongest military is to declare peace and to attack cartels, regardless of international law. Night is day.
He couldn’t even stop himself from saying he would have done a better job as a developer for the aging UN building complex or claiming positive political polls. We can credit Trump mainly for not masking his true character.
An Inside-Out View
“What is the purpose of the UN?” asked Trump, if the world’s nations do not act as the U.S. wants – -in the Trump mold, the only way things should be. He mocked an institution of international debate and one that offers aid to the vulnerable as ineffective and wasteful of the dwindling U.S. support payments he is throttling.
He refuses to recognize UN intervention, then complains that it is insufficient — or worse, not promoting the interests of the United States.
As if we needed it spelled out, Trump insisted he only does business with leaders he likes and made sure to underscore that he likes Russia’s dictatorial Vladimir Putin more than others. Still, he called on Europe and NATO countries to stop all purchase of Russian oil, though the U.S. has withheld issuing sanctions for doing so.
The continuing wars from Russian invasion of Ukraine and between Israel and Hamas in Gaza provided a sobering background of reality not embraced by Trump’s long speech. If anything, the talking heads were taken with a change in attitude from world leaders towards the United States as Trump’s “America First” message is pushing alliances around the U.S. rather than with this country.
Among other things, Trump insisted that Christianity is the most persecuted religion on Earth, which may come as a surprise to Jews, Muslims (he attacked the Muslim London mayor personally), or even followers of the Dalai Lama.
The speech was prelude to individual meetings with other leaders and a press conference in which Trump said NATO countries should shoot down Russian aircraft that cross their border, but that U.S. backup “depends on the circumstances.” How’s that for an ally?
And then Trump turned around after meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to say Ukraine should be supported — through NATO payments — to win back all its territory from a “paper tiger” Russia? Any questions here?
The ending note — a plea for countries to fight for their homelands and native cultures — was strangely at odds with his plea for recognition for a bristling United States that he insists is forcing peacemaking to break out among warring nations.
Is the world better off today than it was a year or two ago? Is it because of Trump?
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