During a mind-numbing White House press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump delivered a familiar boast with a straight face. “America,” the president said, “is respected again on the world stage.”
The line, of course, has been a staple of the Republican president’s rhetoric across both of his terms, despite the ridiculousness of the underlying point. International public opinion research has consistently shown that global respect and confidence in the U.S. has reached record depths under Trump.
But it’s not only foreign citizens who have lost respect for the Trump-led United States, it’s also foreign officials and governments, which are increasingly looking at what’s become of us with a combination of fear, disappointment, contempt and confusion.
As the American president’s crusade to acquire Greenland intensifies, and as he imposes economic penalties on U.S. allies who balk at his demands, Trump’s claims of global respect have taken a dark turn. We’re no longer looking at an absurdity; we’re instead confronting a tragedy.
While Trump prepared to join other world leaders at the annual World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Switzerland, The Wall Street Journal reported:
President Trump is showing up for an annual gathering of the global elite here in the Swiss Alps, swinging a wrecking ball at the international order. […]
The reactions from many U.S. allies and partners, some of them aired in public, many of them still only expressed in private, are stark: Trump’s America seems to have lost its mind.
The most dramatic example of such perceptions came during Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s prepared remarks at the gathering, in which he declared, “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” Without explicitly referencing Trump, Carney went on to describe “the breaking of the world order,” a “brutal reality” in which leading world powers no longer feel “subject to any constraint” as they “abandon even the pretense of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interest.”
Carney was not alone. French President Emmanuel Macron similarly made clear that his country would not capitulate to Trump’s bullying. Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever said that he and his allies tried to “appease” the White House, but that those efforts have run their course.
“We were in a very bad position at the moment, we were dependent on the United States, so we chose to be lenient, but now so many red lines are being crossed that you have the choice between your self-respect,” he continued. “Being a happy vassel is one thing, being a miserable slave is something else. If you back down now, you’re going to lose your dignity, and that’s probably the most precious thing you can have in a democracy is your dignity.”
Around the same time, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk published an item to social media in which he declared, “Appeasement is always a sign of weakness. Europe cannot afford to be weak — neither against its enemies, nor ally. Appeasement means no results, only humiliation.” International skepticism of Trump and his agenda is not altogether new, but as the American president’s radicalism becomes more dangerous and destabilizing, the reactions of some of the United States’ closest allies of longest standing is qualitatively different from anything we’ve yet seen in the modern era. The emerging picture is one in which leading nations — treaty allies, neighbors, trading partners and friends — see a Trump-led U.S. as an erratic menace, a once-great hegemonic power descending into madness and risking global stability. In their wildest dreams, America’s foreign adversaries couldn’t have written a better script. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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