We used to disparage someone by noting that their “ego is the size of Texas.”
Does anyone say that about Trump? Yeah, no, Texas is tiny by comparison.
I can think of no one with a more vast lacuna between his abilities and accomplishments on the one side and his ego on the other.
A worldwide herculean effort finally produced the Paris Agreement as a moderate but highly necessary response to our fossil fuel profligacy and the climate chaos that has begun. Trump idiotically pulled out and the world is far worse off as an unhappy result. His deal? Pollute more, a lot more. We see more forest fires, more floods, more hurricanes and more intense hurricanes, rising seas, and more health issues from bad air. Thanks, Artful Dealer.
More seriously tough negotiations produced the Iran deal, which has stopped Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. So what does DT do? Pulls out of that deal. The rest of the world is trying, as with the Paris Agreement, to salvage what is left after the Trumpexit.
Now comes a murderous Saudi hit on a journalist that the world can clearly see originated from the very top, from bin Salman, but Trump publicly exculpates him even as he claims that, essentially, whatever these thugs do is irrelevant, since Saudi Arabia buys war stuff from U.S. corporations. Seriously?
That thinking never stopped Trump from yanking us out of the Iran deal, a side benefit of which, for Trump’s buddy Putin, is that Russia is now moving into Iran to sell them the lethal tools that Boeing used to. Which logic is it, Donald? None? Yeah, we’re getting that.
Trump undoes everyone else’s great work and then takes credit for the no-deal with North Korea. Huh? Every president before him got the same empty promises from three generations of North Korean leaders, but no other U.S. president has vaulted any of the Dear Leaders to a position of global prominence and legitimacy. These terrorists could only find a friend in Trump, who, so far, has totally failed to ink an actual deal with the current N. Korea dictator.
Again, after years and years of global struggle to begin nuclear disarmament with only poor agreements to show for it, at long last Gorbachev convinced Ronald Reagan to sensibly sign the very first actual nuclear disarmament treaty in December 1987, easily the most important achievement of the otherwise mediocre-to-poor Reagan terms.
So what does Trump do? Naturally. He announces he’s going to vacate the best nuclear deal any U.S. president has ever made, the start to what others then worked on since and have actually reduced the global total of nuclear warheads from more than 30,000 in the mid-1980s to approximately 7,000 today. Slow but necessary progress if humans have brains. At all.
The Art of the Deal? Feh. The U.S., the people of planet Earth, and future generations have never had such a poor negotiator who puts his ego ahead of everything. Our grandchildren have never been so threatened as the Trump-Putin-corporado coalition we see in play right now.
If we show some sense on Nov. 6 we can slowly begin to reverse the damage. If not, he’s left to wreck more and more, everything he touches. He’s like King Midas in reverse, more like the Ebola of the Deal. He thinks his touch is gold when it’s toxic, fatal. The American voter is the only possible antidote.
Dr. Tom H. Hastings is PeaceVoice director and on occasion an expert witness for the defense in court.
