Wing it, with shouting
Aaron Blake at the Post on why it’s so alarming that Trump cheerily admits he lies to heads of state government.
The first reason is that this is perhaps the one issue Trump has focused on for decades: trade. It would be more understandable for him to make things up on guns and immigration, but trade is supposedly the issue on which Trump has been entirely consistent for many years. The idea that other countries are taking advantage of the United States was a talking point long before he became a politician.
Yet he doesn’t know even a basic fact about it, so what does that say about his knowledge of other issues? Combine the ignorance, the lies, and the belligerence, and then plug in Kim.
What happens if Trump takes this approach — or the one from the meetings on guns and immigration — to his meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un? Can a guy who can’t be bothered to understand the basics before talking to foreign leaders and lawmakers do the kind of homework required for very sensitive and complicated negotiations involving nuclear programs? And what if he doesn’t even try? What if he decides to wing it, as he did with Trudeau?
Thus far, Trump has shown no signs that he thinks that style isn’t working. And apparently, it’s still very much a part of his international diplomacy.
Scary enough?
I don’t honestly know from diplomacy, how you generally handle people like this when you’ve got them across the table from you, and they’re the spokesperson for whichever foreign power, and it’s clear they spent the night before snorting coke with their mistress or whatever is their current vice, rather than actually deigning to read a briefing. This assuming their organization even has the capacity to prepare one. I’d suspect it’s hardly the first time someone sat there and tried not to roll their eyes too hard, thinking, right, whatever, this is mostly for the remaining clueless dolts in his domestic audience that support him, and, presumably, eventually, we’ll talk to someone who actually has some grasp what are the real numbers. So, right, let him blather on for the amusement of the international audience, I guess. Yes, actuaries around the world are pointing at spreadsheets and laughing and/or swearing. But liars gonna lie.
… mind, probably more generally, or at least I’d like to think so, this kind of idiot fact-free blithering is more often the stuff of strutting uniformed ‘strongmen’ from banana republics no one expects much better from. And the only reason it makes any sense for them is: they control the local media well enough it’s going to be hard, at least, for their local target audience to know how full of it they are. It’s the pose they need to strike: I are tough. Look at me come to bat for _you_ against these sneaky foreigners out to take advantage of you. And never mind they’re really only out to help themselves and their friends stay at the trough they’ve established.
But, it’s interesting and a bit disturbing: Trump kinda _is_ that, so far as his remaining supporters are concerned. It’s not that they _couldn’t_ find out he’s full of it. It’s that, on average, they won’t. They’ll stick to Fox and Friends, and RightWingTrollNet Inc., and never hear otherwise. Might as _well_ be in that banana republic or police state, for all the hope they have of realizing how utterly they’re being had.
Pedant that I am, I must point out the Justin is not our Head of State (even if his daddy liked to put on airs on occasion. But then, Pierre could actually pull it off…), but our Head of Government. The HoS is Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, otherwise known as Lizzie Windsor, or just plain Brenda.
But seriously, how in hell can you do anything — trade, security, whatever — with a supposed ally who just makes shit up? I really, desperately hope the rest of the Western democracies have a clandestine diplomatic back-channel going, in which they confer on how to handle the headless chicken that is the current USA, and generally get on without being able to rely on the Americans for anything.
Oh yes I always get mixed up about that.