“Angela Merkel puts Donald Trump in timeout for throwing his toys at the table.” That was one circulated caption on this photo that “went viral” after Donald Trump’s brattish behavior threw mud all over the recent summit meeting of the G7 in Quebec. The G7 serves as a forum for highly industrialized democracies to coordinate economic, security, and energy policy. Members are the U.S., Germany, Canada, France, Italy, Japan and Great Britain.
Donald was miffed when the group declined to readmit Russia, then about everything else, including criticism of his new tariffs on imports, etc. He had come to the meeting late, expressed boredom when others talked, left early—and promptly tweeted insults against host Canadian premier Justin Trudeau from aboard Air Force One. What a guy! What a total .— ... ... as Mr. Morse would say it.
The reason I bring this up now is that the summit was June 8-9. Vindictive Donald, when faced with our southern border immigration imbroglio just wasn’t satisfied with finger-pointing at Democrats (for refusing to fall in line behind him), Barak Obama (for not being Trumpish), etc. He had to get in some licks against Chancellor Merkel and Germany (10 days after he was put down at the conference in Quebec. And that photo above that so insults his ego, picturing him not in command—and apparently being taken to task by a woman!)
“BERLIN—President Donald Trump castigated the German government Monday for its open-door policy toward migrants, saying it was responsible for an increase in crime and could conceivably lead to the downfall of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition. ‘The people of Germany are turning against their leadership as migration is rocking the already tenuous Berlin coalition,’ Trump wrote. ‘Crime in Germany is way up. Big mistake made all over Europe in allowing millions of people in who have so strongly changed their culture’.”—New York Times, June 19.
LIES, LIES, LIES! Aimed both at one-upping Chancellor Merkel, and damaging her political status, after the G7 debacle. And at the same time embellishing the portrait of fear he has been painting of “tremendous crime” via the Mexican border because of Hispanic refugees and other immigrants.
The fact check—“Crime statistics for 2017 showed the lowest level of crime in Germany in 25 years, according to figures released in May by the federal criminal office. Although there have been attacks by extremists aligned with the Islamic State group, as well as high-profile killings and assaults by migrant men, the statistics refute Trump’s suggestion.”
“Suggestion” is the Times’ polite word. I prefer to tell it like it is and talk about “Trump’s lies.” He makes things up out of thin air as he goes along, seeking to create a Trump universe.
Overall crime in Germany was down 5.1% over the previous year, violent crime down 2.4% and property theft down 11.8%. Illegal border crossing dropped 79.9%. So where does Donald come up with this stuff he uses to polish his ego? From that dark place where the sun doesn’t shine.
Mehr Leistung für Angela!
Meanwhile, there seems to be better accord among nations elsewhere (including Germany) on matters such as immigration. The news reported June 20 that “Germany and France agreed to combat secondary migration within the European Union by limiting incentives for asylum seekers to move within the bloc and by transferring them to competent member states, the Meseberg declaration adopted at talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron read on Tuesday.”
The rest of the illustration at the top of this blog gives you a choice of ever-arrogant and conscience-less Donald and a little Hispanic kid separated from his mother at the Mexican border. When it comes to the soul of our nation down the road, I’ll take the kid.
It’s no surprise that Duplicitous Donald is trying to plant into the public mind that it’s actually Democrats who are to blame for separation of children and their immigrant parents at the Mexican border. He idiotically blames the Democratic minority in his GOP Congress—and Barack Obama in years past. He finally signed an executive order seemingly alleviating some of his administration’s cold-blooded “zero tolerance” immigration policy. “Crying children don’t look good politically,” he is reported as having observed.
However, as he continues to rave about “tremendous crime,” “threats to public safety,” “drugs pouring across the border,” “people using children to get through the border,” being “overrun with millions of people . . .” one of his major underlying motivations of it all is his insistence on funding for his wall along the Mexican border—with associated costs (access roads, etc.) projected to cost some $33 billion over the next decade. He already has been blackmailing Congress for wall funding with delayed renewal of the DACA program (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals). It affects hundreds of thousands of earlier young immigrants who could face deportation.
This is the same man who boasts about being an all-powerful president, able to affect the world with a stroke of his pen. Yet he and his coterie of clowns are basically coarsening our society, destroying our environment and mortally wounding our international relations. He even fumbled the ball away to Kim J. Un at that farcical Singapore summit. Kim’s on his way up on the world stage.
His current harangue on Democrats also is obviously aimed at the November mid-term elections. The public has to elect more Republicans, he says. That would be like digging deeper to get out of a hole. It seems more obvious to me that we actually need more Democrats in Congress to blunt the ongoing assault of the loose-cannon Trumpian ego. Most ideal would be something close to a veto-overriding capacity of two-thirds vote in both chambers of Congress.
That would be the next-best thing to getting Trump out of office.
My own opinion—bolstered by the vision of caged, crying children in the border states—is that electing more women to high political office also would do much to restore and maintain the compassion and empathy that have been hallmarks of the American way.
Spare us from good old boys such as John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani, Scott Pruitt, Ryan Zinke . . . and bullied and feckless Congressional Republicans. Donald promised grandly to “drain the swamp” in D.C. but has instead just constructed a fetid moat around his castle and stocked it with ‘gators.
As for “drugs pouring across our border,” details are murky at best. Google seems evasive when I ask about how much of current opioids is produced in the U. S., for instance. Charts do show that In modern years, a preponderance of such drugs as cocaine, and to some extent heroin, has originated in South America. Heroin production in Mexico is concentrated along the West Coast.
From what I’ve read, Donald is so obsessed with human traffic he likes to paint a picture of drug “mules” sneaking the product across the border in vast amounts. However, smuggling by sea seems to be the more intelligent method, and as Donald says, “We have to have security, have to be protected.” A news story April 24 reported: “The U. S. Coast Guard off-loaded more than 12 tons of cocaine and 1 ton of marijuana in Florida on Tuesday—a gigantic mound of drugs seized in international waters. The drugs . . . were the fruit of major busts off the Pacific Coast of Mexico, as well as Central and South America . . . the massive pile of drug was the result of 17 separate drug-smuggling vessel seizures. . . Canadian naval vessels also assisted in some of the interdictions.”
I suspect an under-equipped U. S. Coast Guard is pretty much ignored as Donald pumps more and more billions into national defense via the Pentagon and “his” generals. He’s also planning to institute a Space branch of the U. S. military.
Donald also likes to compare desperate refugees and other Hispanic immigrants with MS-13 to engender fear in the minds of the public. As Wikipedia puts it: “Mara Salvatrucha (MS), also known asMS-13 (the 13 representing their Sureño affiliation), is an international criminal gang that originated in Los Angeles, California, in the 1980s. The gang later spread to many parts of the continental United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America, and is active in urban and suburban areas. Most members are of Central American origin, principally El Salvador."
With an additional $50 billion or so socked into the current Defense budget, one would think Donald could devote some significant manpower in this direction. Perhaps pump up the FBI, which he seems instead determined to impede because it does not kowtow to his personal majesty.
Quote of the Week—Canada stands pretty united in disgust over the rude and petulant manner in which Trump treated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in their disagreement over trade relations at the G7 summit.“I think sometimes, you know, you have to tell the schoolyard bully that they can’t have our lunch money. And I think that’s what the prime minister did,” said James Watt, a Toronto-based conservative political strategist.”I think Canadians would say they were proud of their prime minister.” (as are a great many of us here in the U.S.)
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