The ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas is obviously a development worth celebrating. The details are still rather scarce; there’s still a lot of work left to be done; and there’s no shortage of uncertainty about the next steps; but hostages are now free and the deadly violence has been paused. That’s obviously good news.
With this in mind, Donald Trump started the week in the Middle East, claiming credit for the long-awaited diplomatic breakthrough. The American president could’ve seen this as an opportunity to position himself as a leading international statesman, but instead the Republican decided to bring some of his worst habits to an international stage.
At a press gaggle in Egypt, for example, Trump boasted about a meeting he had with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi nearly a decade ago. “We knew each other from the beginning,” the Republican said. “The first time we met it was at a hotel and I was going to meet him and then Hillary Clinton was following me. You remember? Hillary Clinton. And he liked me so much he never even got to see Hillary. … [Sisi] didn’t want to waste a lot of time. He knew what was going to happen.”
The story was imaginary — at the time, Sisi met with Clinton before speaking to Trump, huddling with the then-Democratic candidate for more than an hour — but just as notable was that Trump thought it’d be a good idea to use this platform and this moment to peddle nonsense about his 2016 rival.
And then he did it again. At the agreement signing later in the day, Trump turned to the Egyptian president and asked if he’d heard of “crooked Hillary Clinton.”
The ugly rhetoric didn’t do the Republican any favors — he looked ridiculous on foreign soil attacking former foes back home in his own country for no reason — but it wasn’t his only rhetorical shot at Americans he doesn’t like. NBC News reported on the president’s addresses to the Israeli Knesset:
In an apparently unscripted aside, Trump denigrated two of his predecessors in the Oval Office. He referred to former President Joe Biden’s administration as the worst in U.S. history, then said former President Barack Obama was ‘not far behind.’ … He later accused both presidents of a ‘hatred toward Israel,’ faulting Obama for signing a 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
As part of the offensive, Trump even whined about Obama doing “nothing” with the Abraham Accords. (The diplomatic agreements were reached in 2020. Obama did “nothing” with the accords because he left office in January 2017 and lacked access to a time machine.)
At this point, we could talk about how the international nuclear agreement with Iran actually benefited Israel. We could also talk about the fact that both Obama and Biden maintained strong ties to Israel throughout their terms. We could talk about the fact that Trump has already locked up the race for worst president in history.
We could also take a moment to note that while Trump was eager to brag about the release of Israeli hostages in recent days, it was Biden and his team who negotiated a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas five weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks two years ago, securing the release of 105 hostages — developments that have apparently been lost to memory. For that matter, we could even talk about the fact that Biden and his team drafted a credible peace plan between Israel and Hamas in January, which Trump and Israel ultimately squandered, leading to eight additional months of deadly conflict. But as notable as each of these elements are, the one thing that I still can’t get over is that the Republican president, at a moment he perceived as a triumph, traveled halfway around the world and smeared prominent Americans he doesn’t like for no reason. It would’ve been easy for Trump to just stick to the White House’s script, but as is too often the case, he just couldn’t help himself.
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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