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Donald Trump had a very bad week and the trouble will continue to come. When he went to bed the night of the elections, the Democrats had overthrown some twenty seats in the House and had to lose up to four or five in the Senate. At his press conference the next day, he said the Republicans would hold 55 seats in the Senate at the next convention. He falsely declared that "Republicans have dramatically surpassed historical precedent".
With the Democratic victories in Montana and Arizona, and the race in Florida still too close, Republicans could enter in January with only 52 seats in the Senate. At the time of writing this, the Democrats have won 33 seats or even 40, with nine races still too close to be relied on.
Trump's atmosphere during his press conference after the elections quickly deteriorated. He escalated his quarrel with CNN, the cable news network, and his correspondent Jim Acosta at the White House, telling Acosta to "lay the microphone" and "sit down" before he pointing to the lectern and, pointing his finger at Acosta, said, "I tell you what, CNN should be ashamed of herself, make you work for them.You are a rude and terrible person.You should not not work for CNN. " He shouted to African-American journalist April Ryan to "sit down", refusing to answer his questions, and called her later in the week "a loser" and "very mean". He then sued PBS Newshour reporter Yamiche Alcindor, calling him. question about white nationalists increasingly accepted by Trump's "racist" remarks.
Friday, his mood was even darker. Stopping on the White House lawn as he was leaving for his trip to Paris, Trump told CNN reporter Abby Phillip, who had asked him if his new Attorney General, Matthew Whitaker, "would curb" the investigation conducted in Russia by the special advocate Robert Mueller. "What a silly question," said Trump. "What a stupid question, but I'm looking at you a lot, you're asking a lot of stupid questions."
Trump's trip to Paris gave him the opportunity to change his conversation. He was traveling to Europe to celebrate the armistice that ended the First World War a hundred years ago. The entry of US forces into this war in April 1917 marked the turning point in this brutal stalemate. Over the next 18 months, two million Americans in uniform would be engaged in the war. In the spring of 1918, US forces entered the battlefield at a rate of 10,000 per day. American forces won victories at great expense during the battles of Cantigny, Château-Thierry and Belleau Wood, and helped the British, French and Portuguese forces to win the battle against the German offensive in the spring of 1918.
Without the entry of the United States into the war, Europe would probably have fallen under the fire of the German aggression and millions more would have been killed than the roughly 20 million who have ended up falling into the war, including eight million civilians. It goes without saying that Europe owed us a debt of gratitude on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of the end of the war.
As Trump traveled to Paris, the three main European leaders had been politically injured in recent months. The popularity of Britain's Theresa May is at an all-time low, according to a July poll cited in the Evening Standard. "Only a quarter of Britons now have a favorable opinion of Ms. May, while 62% have an unfavorable point of view, "says the newspaper. Problems with Brexit have caused resignations of his government. Four months ago, his highly pro-Brexit foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, resigned. Last week, his brother Jo Johnson, secretary of transport, followed him.
The results of French President Emmanuel Macron's election are as bad as those of May. According to a survey conducted in September, only 29% of French people approved of his behavior, reported CNBC. The popular Macron Minister of the Environment, Nicolas Hulot, recently resignedInterior Minister Gérard Collomb, and one of his closest allies, announced that he would leave the government to run for mayor of Lyon in 2020.
The government of German Chancellor Angela Merkel is also troubled. Two weeks ago she shocked the country by announcing that she would not run for the leadership of her party, the Christian Democratic Union, and that she would step down as chancellor. 2021, putting an end to his reign of 13 years at the head of Germany. This week, his Minister of the Interior, Horst Seehofer, announced his resignation his leadership position of the Christian Social Union, a party that is an important member of Merkel's governing coalition.
With a poll ten points higher than that of his European counterparts, Donald Trump could have traveled to Paris feeling relatively good. Instead, he spent the weekend pouting. The big picture Sunday of European leaders walking on the Champs-Elysees in Paris was without Trump. He was then taken to the Arc de Triomphe, where he was treated to a Macron speech denouncing Trump's alleged pride as a "nationalist".
"Patriotism is the complete opposite of nationalism," Macron told fellow European leaders. "Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying," Our interest first. Who cares about others?
Trump stood ruthlessly.
In fact, Trump seemed to smile only once all weekend, when Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived (also separately from the others) and shook hands with him. The photographs taken over the weekend often showed Angela Merkel and Macron huddling against each other while smiling and chatting. Other groups of leaders were also visible, separated from Trump, often isolated, ignored by others.
Trump was criticized Saturday for ignoring the commemorative ceremony at the American Cemetery of Aisne-Marne, at the foot of the hill where the Battle of Belleau Wood took place. The White House gave lame excuses that the Trump helicopter was not able to fly due to weather conditions. But they were quickly shot down by military experts who pointed out that military helicopters of the type used by Trump do not depend on sunny weather to fly in combat. Military helicopters are equipped to fly in almost all conditions, except in case of blizzard or fog, which were neither present in France on a rainy and icy day. This week, Trump tweeted that the secret service had prevented him from going to the cemetery because they did not want to drive in the rain.
During his weekend abroad, Trump only reiterated his attacks against the trade imbalances of NATO and Europe. Trump called the European contributions to NATO "unjust" and tweeted that the United States was paying "for large portions" of European defense.
I have just returned from France where much has been accomplished in my meetings with world leaders. It is never easy to talk about the fact that the United States must be treated fairly, which has not been the case in both the military and the commercial areas. We pay for large portions of the military protection of other countries, ……..
– Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 12, 2018
This comes from a man who has put his name on hotels and condominium buildings around the world and has sold countless of these condos to Europeans and other people. It does not seem to have come to his mind that the American defense of his overseas allies has protected the places where he has affixed his name to hotels and condominiums, not to mention providing millionaires and billionaires to whom he sells these condos the money with which to pay him.
Britain, France and Germany listened to his speech before, of course, mainly in the exact terms used by Trump last weekend. This is one of the extraordinary things about Trump. He never says anything new. United States good. NATO is bad. Unfair trade. America first. All others second.
One might think that Trump would return solemn tributes to the American and Allied war dead in France with a sense of pride for the role that the United States played in keeping Europe free and democratic. The Trump family is from Kallstadt, a small town between Mannheim and Kaiserslautern in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The United States freed Nazism from the ancestral home of its family.
I lived on a US Army base not far from Kallstadt in 1955 and 1956. The nearby cities of Stuttgart, Mannheim and Kaiserslautern were all heavily bombed during the Second World War. In fact, part of the devastation of German cities was still visible ten years after the end of the war. I remember driving in streets bombed by school buses. We saw the damage done by our car when we went to visit friends of my family at other nearby army stations. We played in German fortifications and in fields where we could still find German helmets and backpacks. One day we found a German rifle. Another day, my brother and I proudly brought back a German hand grenade "mashed potato".
The Second World War is still present in the life of the Germans. As recently as last year, hundreds of residents of Kaiserslautern had to be evacuated when allied air raid bombs were discovered during earthworks on a construction site. Bombs weighing 250 and 500 pounds were discovered. These were the third and fourth bombs found in the area in as many weeks. The effects of wars in Europe are still felt there. The bombs dropped 75 years ago are still in the ground, ready to explode.
The man who has his roots in a part of Europe torn apart by wars that have killed tens of millions of people in the last century did not represent his country during the celebrations devoted to the armistice. He just stayed there and pouted. His motto is not really America first, it's first and foremost Trump, and the problem last weekend in Paris was that Trump was not not the first. Those who gave their lives during the First World War were the first.
Trump did not come to pay tribute to the soldiers who gave their lives to make us free. He just shunned, and gave up, and pouted.
Lucian K. Truscott IV
Lucian K. Truscott IV, a West Point graduate, has a 50-year career as a journalist, novelist and screenwriter. He has covered reports such as Watergate, the Stonewall riots and the wars in Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan. He is also the author of five successful novels and several unsuccessful films. He has three children, lives in East Long Island and spends his time worrying about the state of our nation and scribbling madly in an unsuccessful attempt here to make things better. He can be followed on Facebook at The Rabbit Hole and on Twitter @LucianKTruscott.
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