Trump Sides With Dictators and Tyrants on Embarrassing Overseas Trip

Trump headed out on his trip to the G20 and he seemed the most comfortable with his friends Putin, MBS and he had to do a trip over to the DMZ to say hi to Little Kim, where he gave the brutal dictator another win, and the U.S.A. got nothing back. But Trump is in this only for himself, and he envies these brutal leaders who have ultimate power and kill their enemies.

But Trump’s G20 Trip Was More Bizarre and Embarrassing Than You Thought

Trump has heaped praise on Kim, a practice he continued during his G-20 trip. “There’s a good feeling,” Trump said Saturday of their ties. “I just think we have a very good relationship—the two of us.” Trump also had kind words for Mohammed bin Salman, the Saudi Arabian prince accused of ordering the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. “You have done a spectacular job,” Trump told the Saudi, known as MBS, who functions as the day-to-day ruler of his country, during a meeting Friday. Ignoring reported US intelligence assessments that MBS personally ordered Khashoggi’s gruesome murder, Trump said that “nobody so far has pointed directly a finger at the future king of Saudi Arabia.”

Trump also made light of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election and the possibility that Moscow will again work to support his campaign in 2020 during a meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin. “Don’t meddle in the election, please,” Trump said, jokingly wagging his finger at Putin, while avoiding eye contact with Putin as the two leaders appeared before reporters.

Worse, Trump bonded with Putin over their mutual distain of journalists. Reminder: Putin is suspected of directing the murder of journalists. “Get rid of them,” Trump said. “’Fake news’ is a great term, isn’t it. You don’t have this problem in Russia, but we do.” Putin responded: “We also have. It’s the same.”

Trump walked into North Korea with that country’s dictator, Kim Jong Un, becoming the first sitting US president to so. Trump received little beyond a photo-op in exchange for an act of legitimating a tyrannical regime. But the visit also produced a bizarre moment when Trump’s new press secretary, Stephanie Grisham, jostled with North Korean security in an effort to ensure American reporters documented the meeting. CNN reported that Grisham got in “an all out brawl” with North Korean officials, and was bruised in the effort.

President Donald Trump is heading home after an eventful trip to G20 summit in Japan packed with enough bizarre statements and diplomatic gaffes to render the visit a disaster, if anyone weren’t already used to this stuff. Here are some lowlights.

Trump’ sympathy for Putin was exhausted by their exchange about election meddling and “fake news.” When asked Saturday about Putin’s claim that Western-style liberalism has failed, Trump not only didn’t defend the liberal democratic political tradition—majority rule tempered by individual rights—of the United States and its allies. Trump also seemed unaware that the liberalism championed by thinkers like John Locke and John Stuart Mill, which includes enthusiasm for capitalism, differs from the meaning of the term liberal when used to describe people like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the American left. He also seemed to interpret “Western” literally, by listing cities on America’s west coast: “I guess you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in San Francisco, and a couple other cities which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people.”

In the same appearance, Trump, seemed unaware that the term “busing” is often used to mean a federally mandated busing to desegregate schools, rather than to describe the literal use of buses to transport children to school.