I was embarrassed by the President’s remarks aimed toward perhaps our greatest friend and ally, remarks that betrayed nearly a century of an unalloyed partnership annealed in battlefield blood and national treasures.
There is a great danger inherent in loose talk by a world leader, and nowhere was that more on display than over the past few days as Donald Trump managed to berate not one, but two staunch U.S. allies—Mexico and Australia. Telling Mexico’s President Peña Nieto that his county’s military was not up to the task of policing its own criminals, and suggesting that American troops would do a better job, did nothing to salve the wound Trump keeps open to infection with his talk of a wall between our two countries
.
Not satisfied with his bullying of our friends to the very near south, Mr. Trump thought it appropriate to taunt Australia, our friends to the very far south and on the other side of the globe. With one call that had every possibility of a good outcome at the outset, Mr. Trump took a different path, insulting Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by threatening—an empty threat, by the way—to undo an immigration agreement between the U.S. and Australia affecting the lives of 1,250 refugees whose only fault was wanting to avoid a sure death sentence in their home country. Mr. Trump, who told the Prime Minister that he was tired of the phone call, hung up abruptly, leaving Mr. Turnbull holding a silent phone 10,000 miles away.
Mr. Turnbull, to his credit, chose not to characterize the call as anything other than cordial and productive. Mr. Trump and his various spokespersons backpedaled a day later with faint praise for the prime minister, Australia, and Australians.
But the President cannot seem to let go of his propensity to needle and whine. At Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump repeated his always inappropriate attempt to shame the world community, by saying, just hours after insulting Prime Minister Turnbull, "It's time we're going to be a little tough folks. We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore. It's not going to happen anymore."
President Peña Nieto and Prime Minister Turnbull were not the only leaders affected by Mr. Trump’s rash and irresponsible comments from the Oval Office. Leaders in every foreign capital parsed Trump’s reported words and the attitude those words conveyed, and they made certain calculations based on their interpretation of the words and postures.
The carefully-aimed dispiriting word, like a poison arrow or hollow-point bullet or nuclear ballistic missile, cannot be recalled once launched at its target. It will fly unerringly to impact a vulnerable heart or an unsuspecting nation, and no matter how many kind words follow in its path, they cannot erase the damage done by that first, deadly round.
Quora respondent Marshall Glass put it succinctly when he said in his answer to the question at hand, “The repercussions of this rudeness only diminishes the character of the American citizen travelling across the world. You can imagine how people will laugh at your social immaturity for voting for a President of such poor etiquette on the worlds stage.”
All of which goes to show that words carry the values of the speaker, no matter who they come from, but especially when they’re uttered by a U.S. President. And they carry those values around the globe with the speed of the Internet.
In Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry, an academic paper published by Stanford University in 2003, there is a sentence that should cause us to look at the influences behind President Trump’s utterances: “We recall that Socrates was put to death in part because he was suspected of being a sophist, a clever rhetorician who twists words and makes the weaker argument into the stronger and teaches others to do the same.”
It would be wrong to label Trump a sophist because he is not a rhetorician in any sense of the word. One need only analyze any Trumpian sentence to know that he has difficulty with even the simplest placement of subjects, objects, and verbs. But those who control him, i.e., Steve Bannon, Mike Pence, and Michael Flynn, are well-practiced in the art of sophistry, and it is through Trump they speak. The “weaker” arguments posed by Trump’s liberal and centrist opponents were twisted by his triumvirate of hatred into stronger alt-right arguments based on fear, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and claims of imminent invasion by “radical Islamic terrorists.”
Now, an offhand remark, like President Ronald Reagan’s "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." made during a National Public Radio (NPR) sound check in the Oval Office in 1984, was laughed off almost immediately because the public knew him, and they forgave the lapse—and even laughed with him. It should be noted the Internet and social media were not yet tools of mass communication and the light-speed dissemination of truth and lies, so the public had only the major media—print and television—for sources.
I don’t doubt that had Mr. Reagan’s remarks been subject to today’s fire hoses of information spew, memes ridiculing the president would have hit social media within seconds of the comment, and world leaders would be Tweeting furiously. As it was, there were editorials slamming Reagan for being too cavalier with such serious words, and the Soviets were not happy at all. As noted in Wikipedia, “The Soviet official news agency, TASS, condemned the joke, declaring ‘The USSR condemns this unprecedented and hostile attack by the US President’ and that ‘this kind of behavior is incompatible with the great responsibility borne by heads of nuclear states for the destinies of their own people and mankind’."
In December, 2008, just a month after his election, Barack Obama was still working at raising his public and world profile. He spoke at the Al Smith Dinner, and let everyone know just how lightly he took himself. He said, “Who is Barack Obama? Contrary to the rumors that you've heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-el to save the planet earth…If I had to name my greatest strength, I guess it would be my humility. Greatest weakness, it's possible that I'm a little too awesome.” Even his election opponent, Hillary Clinton, who was in the audience, had to laugh at such a light-hearted and self-deprecating remark.
But when the truly uncomfortable statements flow, like the “Did you do any fornicating?" remark by former President Nixon to interviewer David Frost in 1977, or Nixon’s more character-revealing line when he said, during the same series of Frost interviews, “I'm saying when the president does it, that means it's not illegal,” our impressions of the speaker are hardened and leave him no wiggle room for charity. Such is the case with Mr. Trump, whose shoot-from-the-lip phrases reveal him as little more than a selfish bully, intent on wielding his authority far beyond its Constitutional limits. As recently as Friday, February 3, President Trump laced into a federal jurist who had ruled against Mr. Trump’s immigration ban by referring to him as a “so-called judge.”
It would be impractical to try to list all the unsettling phrases, unkind, and downright dangerous, Mr. Trump uttered during his campaign (the word, “ban” does come to mind, as do the words and phrases “Loser,” “Crooked Hillary,” and “Lock her up”). It stands to reason that to many world leaders, President Trump’s “America First” theme (about which I wrote in a January Huffington column) during his inaugural address, was deeply troubling. I’m sure they looked forward to their first phone calls with Trump with some trepidation.
On one level, it’s easy to say we’re only human when it comes to figuring out what someone is saying versus what they really mean. We all interpret what we hear, how we hear it, and from whom we hear it. And by applying our own filters based on previous experiences with the speaker, we can usually determine if the person was just having a bad day, or was coming off an experience that shaped his or her comments.
Here’s an example: A loved one yells at us, uses uncommonly coarse language, or takes issue with something that would normally be inconsequential. If we are thoughtful and not over-reactive, we back up for a moment, figure out the conditions leading up to the outburst, determine the cause, and allow for the attitude and try to adjust to address their point of view. That’s a simplification, of course, but it’s an example of how local knowledge of a person can help us understand moments when someone we know well acts uncharacteristically, when they say or do things that are hurtful, ignorant, or untrue. In short, we cut them some slack because we know them.
The problem with Trump’s statements and posturing is that no one at whom he aims his vitriol or smarminess knows him at all. Not a single world leader has any real idea who Donald Trump is. Because he’s never held an elective or appointed office of national value, he’s never had to operate within the traditional norms of diplomatic conduct (not, it seems, as if he’d ever want to). He’d barely met Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, but judging from her body language as she stood next to Trump at their joint press conference, and given her remarks about the importance of NATO, of standing up to Russia, and her country’s commitment to immigrants (three issues Trump views differently, if not antithetically), it was clear at the time that whatever Trump said to her behind closed doors was not a message she embraced. And, in his home court, that is on Trump, not on May.
It is incumbent on any incoming American President to be clear and unequivocal in everything he or she says and does on the world stage—either in person or by phone (but not, dear God, by Tweet).
Donald Trump is essentially beginning a job interview with all other world leaders, and, like any job interview, his success or failure hangs on credibility. Bluster, ignorance, bullying, and the careless flinging of inappropriate words are sure turnoffs during any interview, and Prime Ministers Turnbull and May, along with President Peña Nieto, have already judged the job applicant based on incredibly poor interviews.
There is a great danger inherent in loose talk by a world leader, and nowhere was that more on display than over the past few days as Donald Trump managed to berate not one, but two staunch U.S. allies—Mexico and Australia. Telling Mexico’s President Peña Nieto that his county’s military was not up to the task of policing its own criminals, and suggesting that American troops would do a better job, did nothing to salve the wound Trump keeps open to infection with his talk of a wall between our two countries
.
Not satisfied with his bullying of our friends to the very near south, Mr. Trump thought it appropriate to taunt Australia, our friends to the very far south and on the other side of the globe. With one call that had every possibility of a good outcome at the outset, Mr. Trump took a different path, insulting Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull by threatening—an empty threat, by the way—to undo an immigration agreement between the U.S. and Australia affecting the lives of 1,250 refugees whose only fault was wanting to avoid a sure death sentence in their home country. Mr. Trump, who told the Prime Minister that he was tired of the phone call, hung up abruptly, leaving Mr. Turnbull holding a silent phone 10,000 miles away.
Mr. Turnbull, to his credit, chose not to characterize the call as anything other than cordial and productive. Mr. Trump and his various spokespersons backpedaled a day later with faint praise for the prime minister, Australia, and Australians.
But the President cannot seem to let go of his propensity to needle and whine. At Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast, President Trump repeated his always inappropriate attempt to shame the world community, by saying, just hours after insulting Prime Minister Turnbull, "It's time we're going to be a little tough folks. We're taken advantage of by every nation in the world virtually. It's not going to happen anymore. It's not going to happen anymore."
President Peña Nieto and Prime Minister Turnbull were not the only leaders affected by Mr. Trump’s rash and irresponsible comments from the Oval Office. Leaders in every foreign capital parsed Trump’s reported words and the attitude those words conveyed, and they made certain calculations based on their interpretation of the words and postures.
The carefully-aimed dispiriting word, like a poison arrow or hollow-point bullet or nuclear ballistic missile, cannot be recalled once launched at its target. It will fly unerringly to impact a vulnerable heart or an unsuspecting nation, and no matter how many kind words follow in its path, they cannot erase the damage done by that first, deadly round.
Quora respondent Marshall Glass put it succinctly when he said in his answer to the question at hand, “The repercussions of this rudeness only diminishes the character of the American citizen travelling across the world. You can imagine how people will laugh at your social immaturity for voting for a President of such poor etiquette on the worlds stage.”
All of which goes to show that words carry the values of the speaker, no matter who they come from, but especially when they’re uttered by a U.S. President. And they carry those values around the globe with the speed of the Internet.
In Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry, an academic paper published by Stanford University in 2003, there is a sentence that should cause us to look at the influences behind President Trump’s utterances: “We recall that Socrates was put to death in part because he was suspected of being a sophist, a clever rhetorician who twists words and makes the weaker argument into the stronger and teaches others to do the same.”
It would be wrong to label Trump a sophist because he is not a rhetorician in any sense of the word. One need only analyze any Trumpian sentence to know that he has difficulty with even the simplest placement of subjects, objects, and verbs. But those who control him, i.e., Steve Bannon, Mike Pence, and Michael Flynn, are well-practiced in the art of sophistry, and it is through Trump they speak. The “weaker” arguments posed by Trump’s liberal and centrist opponents were twisted by his triumvirate of hatred into stronger alt-right arguments based on fear, xenophobia, religious intolerance, and claims of imminent invasion by “radical Islamic terrorists.”
Now, an offhand remark, like President Ronald Reagan’s "My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes." made during a National Public Radio (NPR) sound check in the Oval Office in 1984, was laughed off almost immediately because the public knew him, and they forgave the lapse—and even laughed with him. It should be noted the Internet and social media were not yet tools of mass communication and the light-speed dissemination of truth and lies, so the public had only the major media—print and television—for sources.
I don’t doubt that had Mr. Reagan’s remarks been subject to today’s fire hoses of information spew, memes ridiculing the president would have hit social media within seconds of the comment, and world leaders would be Tweeting furiously. As it was, there were editorials slamming Reagan for being too cavalier with such serious words, and the Soviets were not happy at all. As noted in Wikipedia, “The Soviet official news agency, TASS, condemned the joke, declaring ‘The USSR condemns this unprecedented and hostile attack by the US President’ and that ‘this kind of behavior is incompatible with the great responsibility borne by heads of nuclear states for the destinies of their own people and mankind’."
In December, 2008, just a month after his election, Barack Obama was still working at raising his public and world profile. He spoke at the Al Smith Dinner, and let everyone know just how lightly he took himself. He said, “Who is Barack Obama? Contrary to the rumors that you've heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-el to save the planet earth…If I had to name my greatest strength, I guess it would be my humility. Greatest weakness, it's possible that I'm a little too awesome.” Even his election opponent, Hillary Clinton, who was in the audience, had to laugh at such a light-hearted and self-deprecating remark.
But when the truly uncomfortable statements flow, like the “Did you do any fornicating?" remark by former President Nixon to interviewer David Frost in 1977, or Nixon’s more character-revealing line when he said, during the same series of Frost interviews, “I'm saying when the president does it, that means it's not illegal,” our impressions of the speaker are hardened and leave him no wiggle room for charity. Such is the case with Mr. Trump, whose shoot-from-the-lip phrases reveal him as little more than a selfish bully, intent on wielding his authority far beyond its Constitutional limits. As recently as Friday, February 3, President Trump laced into a federal jurist who had ruled against Mr. Trump’s immigration ban by referring to him as a “so-called judge.”
It would be impractical to try to list all the unsettling phrases, unkind, and downright dangerous, Mr. Trump uttered during his campaign (the word, “ban” does come to mind, as do the words and phrases “Loser,” “Crooked Hillary,” and “Lock her up”). It stands to reason that to many world leaders, President Trump’s “America First” theme (about which I wrote in a January Huffington column) during his inaugural address, was deeply troubling. I’m sure they looked forward to their first phone calls with Trump with some trepidation.
On one level, it’s easy to say we’re only human when it comes to figuring out what someone is saying versus what they really mean. We all interpret what we hear, how we hear it, and from whom we hear it. And by applying our own filters based on previous experiences with the speaker, we can usually determine if the person was just having a bad day, or was coming off an experience that shaped his or her comments.
Here’s an example: A loved one yells at us, uses uncommonly coarse language, or takes issue with something that would normally be inconsequential. If we are thoughtful and not over-reactive, we back up for a moment, figure out the conditions leading up to the outburst, determine the cause, and allow for the attitude and try to adjust to address their point of view. That’s a simplification, of course, but it’s an example of how local knowledge of a person can help us understand moments when someone we know well acts uncharacteristically, when they say or do things that are hurtful, ignorant, or untrue. In short, we cut them some slack because we know them.
The problem with Trump’s statements and posturing is that no one at whom he aims his vitriol or smarminess knows him at all. Not a single world leader has any real idea who Donald Trump is. Because he’s never held an elective or appointed office of national value, he’s never had to operate within the traditional norms of diplomatic conduct (not, it seems, as if he’d ever want to). He’d barely met Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May, but judging from her body language as she stood next to Trump at their joint press conference, and given her remarks about the importance of NATO, of standing up to Russia, and her country’s commitment to immigrants (three issues Trump views differently, if not antithetically), it was clear at the time that whatever Trump said to her behind closed doors was not a message she embraced. And, in his home court, that is on Trump, not on May.
It is incumbent on any incoming American President to be clear and unequivocal in everything he or she says and does on the world stage—either in person or by phone (but not, dear God, by Tweet).
Donald Trump is essentially beginning a job interview with all other world leaders, and, like any job interview, his success or failure hangs on credibility. Bluster, ignorance, bullying, and the careless flinging of inappropriate words are sure turnoffs during any interview, and Prime Ministers Turnbull and May, along with President Peña Nieto, have already judged the job applicant based on incredibly poor interviews.
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