Sunday, July 21, 2019

Why Trump Fears the Secret British Memo Calling Him a Clown

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/07/trump-fears-secret-british-memo-kim-darroch.html?fbclid=IwAR0kn5JYdlbSz0BONwrqNTWqb-FuXGk4VpTUS0YvgcCCHeqG9K0D-M5vVuw
"The weekend leak of a British diplomatic cable savaging President Trump was a minor event by Trump-era standards. That’s in part because it came via the British press on an American holiday weekend, but also because the memo’s author, British ambassador Kim Darroch, didn’t break new ground in assessing the president and his administration. Trump, he wrote, is dim-witted (“you need to make your points simple, even blunt”), susceptible to flattery (“you need to start praising him for something that he’s done recently”), lies constantly, potentially compromised by Russia (“the worst cannot be ruled out”), and generally incompetent (“we don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept”). We knew all that already. What’s more, we knew that the world (whose diplomatic strategy with the 45th president mixes delicate flattery with low-grade bribes ) knew it already. Even many members of Trump’s own administration know this. Yet Trump’s reaction to the story indicates that he regards it as especially offensive and even dangerous."