The news surrounding Donald Trump’s appearance on Monday before the United Nations General Assembly has not been kind to the President. Once he was greeted with laughter at his insistence that his presidency has been a successful one, Trump tried to play it off as though the laughter was expected as part of the speech, although it was clear that he was thrown for a loop by the crowd having a big laugh at his expense.
But that seems relatively unimportant next to what the real problem was with Trump’s appearance in front of the world: His inability to grasp world affairs, or even the basics of civics, government, or domestic policy.
That was the focus of a chat between CNN’s Kate Bolduan and the legendary Christiane Amanpour, the network’s longtime international correspondent. Kate asked her guest what she thought of the speech, and Amanpour had plenty to say, describing the President as “confused” regarding almost everything he brought up at the UN:
This was about sovereignty, he kept saying it over and over again. The President appears to associate sovereignty with isolationism …Â He believes, it seems from this speech, that to reject globalism, as he said, and to adopt patriotism … means just being for yourself.”
That makes sense — Trump has very publicly adopted a stance that when one person wins, someone else has to lose, and if you’re not winning the loser is you. He applies that to America in a very real sense, seemingly unable to imagine a deal, trade or otherwise, between the United States and any other country in which the “secondary” country (under an “America First” policy) doesn’t somehow suffer.
Watch as Amanpour tears apart Trump’s naÃve outlook on everything from multilateralism to foreign aid, from OPEC countries to the real cause of rising oil prices.
Let’s hope the President tunes in to this segment as well.
Featured image via screen capture
