* Those were some weird, recorded optics–video and AP photos–on display in Washington in that recent meeting between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Donald Trump. Insiders were not shocked.
As a candidate, Trump ridiculed his counterpart for “ruining” Germany with her immigrant-friendly policies. He even hammered Hillary Clinton for wanting to be “America’s Angela Merkel,” pantsuit and all. He also was less than engaging as a host–exemplified in awkward, handshake aversion.
Merkel looked the part of reluctant participant. And you know she misses Barack Obama, no matter what Edward Snowden said was done to her phone.
It was also beyond ironic as to which country’s 21st century leader represents scapegoating, xenophobic authoritarianism.
* No matter how–and how many times–it gets spun for security purposes, how do you reasonably–or sanely–go about proposing significant cuts in the COAST Guard while implementing plans to build an obscenely expensive, campaign-promised wall across the U.S.-Mexican border?
* Maybe it’s just another day at the Trumpian office, but when key presidential surrogates/policy meisters take their “America First” act overseas, foreign counterparts get a quick dose of how “Make America Great Again” is actually playing out early on. Witness how the getting-to-know-you mission of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin went in his sortie to the Group of 20 meeting in Germany.
It was hardly coincidental that the Group’s final communiqué unprecedentedly didn’t even mention “open trade” nor the usual repudiations of “protectionism.” Moreover, at US insistence, there was no formal “pledge” to observe the Paris accords on climate change.
Note to Trump administration: Be careful what you clamor for.
* Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley isn’t given to melodramatic, partisan sound bites. So when he assessed the early chaos and Russian subplots overwhelming the Trump Administration’s first two months, observers duly noted his language.
“There’s a smell of treason in the air,” opined Brinkley. “Imagine if J. Edgar Hoover or any other FBI director would have testified against a sitting president? It would have been a mind-boggling event.”
This won’t end well.