President Trump’s critics are claiming that the video that surfaced of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NATO leaders “mocking” Trump shows what a disaster the President is.
Instead of noticing the high-school like behavior of Trudeau & Co., they cringe on behalf of the U. S.
Remember when we had a sophisticated President?
For my part, I’d say it is a badge of honor that President Trump, who as my colleague Carrie Sheffield pointed out, got some delinquent nations to pony up more money for their own defense, hasn’t been elected Most Popular.
New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz argues that “foreigners mocking President Trump is a sign he’s doing something right.”
European elites despised the “cowboy Bush,” just as they despised the “actor” President Ronald Reagan.
Even President Bill Clinton came in for European mockery. I know, because I lived on the Continent back then. I recall how cultural elites there laughed at Clinton, with his Arkansas twang and his fondness for high-calorie fast food.
As for Obama, maybe they loved him. Then again, he made it a habit to apologize for the United States, not least for our “arrogant, dismissive and derisive” attitude toward Europe. Obama even compared American exceptionalism with British or Greek exceptionalism.
Europeans may have loved that, but did they respect a US president who thought America was just OK? I’m not so sure. Anyway, in that same speech with the apology for our arrogant, dismissive derisiveness, Obama also noted that “in Europe, there is an anti-Americanism that is at once casual but can also be insidious.” Yes, it can be — and it didn’t start with Trump.
Then there are the Canadians. The notions that our neighbors to the north loved America before Trump is equally absurd. For decades, Canadians have traveled with little Canadian flags stitched into their backpacks and luggage lest they be mistaken for yucky Yanks. Yes, many ordinary Canadians admire the United States, but there is in their elite culture a strand of European-style superciliousness about us; Trudeau’s “Mean Girls” act was only the latest expression of it.
Americans journeyed across an ocean to avoid being European, and voters, especially those in battleground Midwest states, don’t look to the likes of Trudeau or Macron for ballot-box guidance. In fact, when haughty Europeans or Canadians don’t like the American president, we can be sure he is doing something right.
I would disagree on one point. Although I did not live in Europe, I do believe that the Europeans loved Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, who despite the affinity for fast foods and Arkansas twang, espoused a more traditional foreign policy that appealed to the striped pants set.
I’d also note the absurdly juvenile nature of Trudeau & Co.’s so-called mockery of Trump. The gist was that he showed up late to a social affair because he stopped to take press questions. Trudeau did a gesture indicating that the faces of Trump’s “team” had fallen when the President halted to address the press.
Yeah, the guy is an egotist who stops to take press questions.