I am re-posting this because it is that important:You are currently funding some dangerous people. These people are indoctrinating young minds throughout the West with an ideology built on resentment. It's not an overstatement to say they've made it their life's mission to undermine Western civilization itself, which they regard as corrupt and oppressive. In this week's video, Jordan Peterson, Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto, explains who they are and how American parents and taxpayers wound up funding this dangerous gang of nihilists.
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Is Trump's strategy causing pain in Iran? (See 1 below.)
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Robert De Nero and Bill Maher are two sick, disgusting puppies. De Nero entertained Hollywood Trump haters with vulgarity and Maher is hoping a deep recession hits our shores.(See 2 below.)
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Israeli farmers are a tough lot and they are not going to be fire-bombed out of their land. Hamas is engaged in a dead end policy but that is not unusual. Palestinians leadership proves every day how they are driven by hatred. (See 3 below.)
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is driving Democrats further away from being supporters of Israel's right to defend itself in order to position himself for a run at the nominee of a socialist Democrat party that is so far left FDR and Truman would not recognize it as the one they once ruled. (See 3a below.)
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The two leaders just shook hands and the show has begun. Both nations want something that the other can offer. The question is whether N Korea is willing to go first in return for what we are prepared to offer them . If not then the world could be in a more dangerous situation than before they met because Trump cannot allow himself to be had and so much is riding on N Korea renouncing its warlike stance.
Meanwhile, will China allow America and N Korea to build a close relationship where N Korea does our bidding and we become the nation that makes their economy sing?
Trump has proven, once again, the merit of having a big stick, being willing to threaten its use and making it clear we are prepared to do so if we have to yet, have an olive branch in one hand at the same time.
Obama never understood this because he was of the mind set that America was the cause of world instability. He was more interested in a tour of appeasement from which Obama never could reverse the tide of fecklessness. His most aggressive stance was when he was seen dribbling a basketball and shooting hoops. How pathetic those who revered him now look as his entire 8 years have been dismantled and place on the refuse pile of history/
Time will tell whether Trump's approach will carry the day. (See 4 below.)
More nonsense from The Editorial Board of the New York Times, There are two sides to te coin but the NYT's can only see one of them because they remain in Obama's apology camp.(See 4a below.)
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Israeli farmers are a tough lot and they are not going to be fire-bombed out of their land. Hamas is engaged in a dead end policy but that is not unusual. Palestinians leadership proves every day how they are driven by hatred. (See 3 below.)
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders is driving Democrats further away from being supporters of Israel's right to defend itself in order to position himself for a run at the nominee of a socialist Democrat party that is so far left FDR and Truman would not recognize it as the one they once ruled. (See 3a below.)
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The two leaders just shook hands and the show has begun. Both nations want something that the other can offer. The question is whether N Korea is willing to go first in return for what we are prepared to offer them . If not then the world could be in a more dangerous situation than before they met because Trump cannot allow himself to be had and so much is riding on N Korea renouncing its warlike stance.
Meanwhile, will China allow America and N Korea to build a close relationship where N Korea does our bidding and we become the nation that makes their economy sing?
Trump has proven, once again, the merit of having a big stick, being willing to threaten its use and making it clear we are prepared to do so if we have to yet, have an olive branch in one hand at the same time.
Obama never understood this because he was of the mind set that America was the cause of world instability. He was more interested in a tour of appeasement from which Obama never could reverse the tide of fecklessness. His most aggressive stance was when he was seen dribbling a basketball and shooting hoops. How pathetic those who revered him now look as his entire 8 years have been dismantled and place on the refuse pile of history/
Time will tell whether Trump's approach will carry the day. (See 4 below.)
More nonsense from The Editorial Board of the New York Times, There are two sides to te coin but the NYT's can only see one of them because they remain in Obama's apology camp.(See 4a below.)
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Dick
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1)
Trump’s North Korean Strategy is Terrifying Iran
The North Korean media reported Sunday that Syrian President Bashar Assad is due in Pyongyang for an official state visit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.
Much of the instant media commentary regarding the announcement claimed that it is nothing more than a testament to the deep, long-standing ties between the two isolated nations, whose rogue behavior has caused both to be shunned by the international community.
The problem with this interpretation is that neither leader is isolated.
Last week, Kim received a visit from Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who invited him to come to a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin later this year. Kim has had two meetings with South Korean President Moon Jae-In, and has had two meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, in just the past three months.
Assad, for his part, just met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on May 17. His forces and their Iranian/Hezbollah/Shiite militia allies have retaken the outskirts of Damascus, and so largely ensured the survival of his regime. Assad has made clear that his next moves will be to seize southern Syria along the Israeli and Jordanian border regions of Quneitra and Daraa from rebel forces. He also has his sights on the U.S.-allied Kurdish held areas in eastern Syria.
In other words, things are looking good for both men. Why would they risk their newly held credibility by meeting with one another? Kim will certainly score no points with Trump for meeting with the man the president referred to recently as “a monster.”
The answer, in a word, is: Iran.
In September 2007, the Israeli air force destroyed a nuclear reactor in Deir Azzour in Syria. The reactor was constructed by North Korea and paid for by Iran.
The Israeli operation placed Iran’s nuclear cooperation with North Korea in stark relief. Many Israeli officials viewed the Syrian reactor as an extension of the Iranian program. Iran constructed the Syrian reactor, they told reporters, as a means to replicate and expand its own capabilities.
According to an Israeli official who was intimately engaged in discussions with the Bush administration regarding the Syrian nuclear reactor both before and after the Israeli airstrike, rather than use the revelations of Iranian-North Korean nuclear cooperation to pressure Iran and North Korea to come clean about their collaborative efforts, and the extent of their nuclear cooperation, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to silence discussion of the issue.
Rice, who opposed the Israeli operation in Syria, was engaged at the time in nuclear talks with both Iran and North Korea. Rice was not interested in highlighting either regime’s role in building the Syrian reactor, because she apparently hoped to appease both.
Due to Rice’s efforts, little attention has been paid publicly to the issue of Iran’s nuclear ties to North Korea. But the fact that those ties exist is an undisputed fact.
Consequently, with North Korea apparently actively engaged in discussions of its nuclear program with Washington, the Iranian regime is likely in a state of panic about what Kim and his representatives are telling the Americans about their work with Iran.
And that is where Assad comes in.
If the North Korean media report of his planned visit is accurate, and if Assad soon shows up in Pyongyang, he won’t be there to show the world that he has friends, too.
Assad will be in Pyongyang as an emissary of the Iranian regime, which wants to find out what Kim is planning — and hopefully, coordinate policy with him before his June 12 meeting with Trump.
Iran’s apparent effort to coordinate its operations with its longtime partner, and its fear that North Korea may be in the process of selling out to the Americans, is not happening in a vacuum. The Trump administration is implementing an across-the-board strategy to isolate Iran from its economic and strategic partners.
In some cases, like Trump’s diplomacy with Pyongyang, and the decision to abandon the Iran nuclear deal, the U.S. is implementing its strategy directly. In other areas, the U.S. is using Israel to implement its strategy of isolating Iran.
If North Korea is Iran’s chief Asian partner, Assad and Putin are Tehran’s most important allies in the Middle East. Russia built Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor. Russia has sold advanced weapons systems to Iran. Since 2015, Russia has been Iran’s chief partner in preventing Assad’s defeat in Syria, and in winning back regions of Syria that rebel forces had successfully seized control over during Syria’s seven-year war.
But for the past several weeks, backed by air strikes against Iranian targets in Syria, Israel has been leading a diplomatic effort aimed at Putin to convince the Russian leader to attenuate, with the goal of ending his alliance with Iran in Syria. As Dore Gold, former director general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry, outlined in a policy paper this week, Israel has been making the case to Putin that now that the Syrian war is petering out, with the Assad regime in control over wide expanses that were previously held by rebel forces, Iran’s plans and interests are no longer aligned with Russia.
Russia wants stability in Syria to ensure its continued control over the Tartus naval base and the Kheimnim air base near Latakia. Assad gave Moscow the bases in exchange for Moscow’s military assistance in saving his regime from destruction.
Iran, on the other hand, has made no attempt to hide the fact that now that the war is winding down, it expects to use its position in Syria, where it controls some 80,000 forces, to pivot to war against Israel. Israel has responded to Iran’s threats by attacking Iranian military positions in Syria. And Israel has also made clear that if it is forced to go to war against Iran in Syria, the government will order the Israel Defense Forces to destroy the Assad regime.
In other words, the Israelis are saying to the Russians: If you do not rein in Iran in a serious way, and block the chance of war, the Assad regime that gave you your port and air base will disappear, and you will need to hope that the next regime, whatever it is, will let you keep the bases. In giving full backing to Israel’s military operations in Syria, the Trump administration has signaled to Moscow that the U.S. will back Israel in the event of such a war.
Understanding that Israel is coordinating all of its actions with the Trump administration, Russia has given partial support to Israel’s position. Over the past two weeks, Putin and Lavrov have made a series of statements calling for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Syria, and stating explicitly that Russia expects Iranian-controlled forces to withdraw from the border area with Israel. The border areas, the Russians have said, should be manned only by Syrian regime forces. Moreover, they have said, Russia is willing to deploy police forces to the border areas to ensure that no Iranian-controlled forces are deployed in those areas.
Israel, while thanking Russia for its recognition of Israel’s concerns, has insisted that Russia demand all Iranian-controlled forces withdraw from Syria. The U.S. backs that demand, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo stated explicitly during his speech on the administration’s Iran policy at the Heritage Foundation last week.
So far, there is ample evidence that Russia is not speaking with one voice on Iran. On the one hand, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced Wednesday that Iranian and Hezbollah forces were preparing to withdraw from the border area with Israel.
On the other hand, while insisting that all Iranian-controlled forces abandon the border zones with Israel, the Russians are also telling Assad that as the “sovereign” in Syria, he has the power to decide whether foreign forces will operate in the country and where they will deploy. Shortly after Putin called for all foreign forces to withdraw from Syria, Russian and Iranian forces jointly constructed 17 fixed military posts around Idlib province.
And perhaps most damningly, on Thursday, Israel’s Hadashot news channel reported that Hezbollah forces along the border with Israel were sighted donning Syrian military uniforms.
But whether Putin is lying or telling the truth about his attenuation of his ties with Tehran, what is clear enough is that Russia’s warm embrace of Israel, including Putin’s decision not to block Israel’s air assaults against Iran’s military assets in Syria, is setting off alarm bells in Tehran.
Whereas a year ago, the Iranians believed their alliance with Putin was stable, today they are forced to worry that he will stab them in the back to improve his relations with Washington. And now, with Putin making at least an artificial separation between Syrian regime forces and Iranian-controlled Shiite forces, the Iranians also need to worry, if only at the margins, that Assad may feel he needs to distance himself from his Iranian sponsors.
The U.S., for its part, is doing everything it can both to reinforce this Iranian paranoia and to prod Moscow away from Tehran. The administration is working both indirectly, through Israel, and directly, through discussions of a summit between Trump and Putin.
It is far too early to know if the Trump administration’s strategy for isolating Iran and destabilizing its alliances will be successful. But both the announcement of Assad’s planned visit to Pyongyang, and the noises the Russians are making on Syria, indicate that Moscow is attenuating its ties with Tehran. Those are encouraging signs of progress.
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2) Liberal Comedian Makes Domestic Violence Joke About Melania
Comedian Michelle Wolf, who rose to national fame after hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner and insulting Ivanka Trump, has doubled down on insulting the first family. But this time, she went after first lady Melania Trump — and she went way too far.
Breitbart reports:
3) Israeli Farmers on Gaza Border – 'Will Not Budge from Here'
An Israeli farmer displayed defiance in the face of the Palestinian fire kite terrorism emanating from Gaza that has destroyed many acres of farmland and caused severe damage to the environment in the area, telling reporters that “we will not budge from here.”
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2) Liberal Comedian Makes Domestic Violence Joke About Melania
Comedian Michelle Wolf, who rose to national fame after hosting the White House Correspondents Dinner and insulting Ivanka Trump, has doubled down on insulting the first family. But this time, she went after first lady Melania Trump — and she went way too far.
Breitbart reports:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Netflix talk show host Michelle Wolf opened her weekly monologue by saying she really hopes President Donald Trump didn’t hurt First Lady Melania Trump because “then we couldn’t make fun of her anymore.”
“And finally, after not being seen for 25 days, Melania has reappeared following her kidney surgery,” Wolf said, gesturing air quotes while saying kidney surgery. “Some people are saying this is Melania’s cover for plastic surgery but, I don’t buy that. Her husband obviously loves her for who she is.”
“Whatever really happened with Melania, I genuinely hope it doesn’t come out that Donald hurt her,” Wolf said, adding, “because that’s bad” and “then we couldn’t make fun of her anymore.”
“We’d have to make her into this brave, feminist icon and I don’t want to do that!” Wolf screamed. “I like making fun of Melania because she’s a bad first lady. She’s one of the worst we’ve ever had. I haven’t seen someone phone in this whole First Lady thing since Betty Ford was still drinking.”
3) Israeli Farmers on Gaza Border – 'Will Not Budge from Here'
An Israeli farmer displayed defiance in the face of the Palestinian fire kite terrorism emanating from Gaza that has destroyed many acres of farmland and caused severe damage to the environment in the area, telling reporters that “we will not budge from here.”
Danny Rahamim, 64, of Kibbutz Nahal Oz on Thursday briefed journalists from around the world on how Israeli farmers and residents are dealing with the phenomenon that threatens their livelihoods.
Standing amid a blackened, ash-covered hill overlooking the Shuja’iyya neighborhood in Gaza situated a scant two kilometers away, Rahamim, who has been tilling the land for over 40 years, stated, “We will not budge from here. We will continue to work the land down to the last meter and we are also optimistic that it will be possible to achieve peace and stability.”
As he finished his remarks, two firefighters brought a Palestinian kite that had landed nearby and showed how such a primitive, simple and inexpensive device could cause so much damage.
The journalists met Rahamim as part of a tour of the area. The purpose was to balance media coverage of the violence on the Gaza border and increase global awareness of the fire kite phenomenon, which is aimed entirely at civilians.
Over 30 foreign journalists representing German, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese and Japanese press agencies as well as Bloomberg and AP joined the tour. Radio stations and journalists from Switzerland, Bulgaria, Brazil, Russia and South Korea also participated.
The tour began in the burnt, still-smoking fields several hundred meters from Kibbutz Or Haner, where Fire and Rescue Service Spokesperson Yoram Levy briefed the journalists on the new reality. At the service’s regional command center in Sderot, the journalists were briefed on the scope of the challenge in real time.
Col. Nadav Livne, commander of the IDF kite unit, presented the IDF’s perspective, explaining that drones were quickly adapted to enable them to hunt kites. Between 450 and 500 kites have already been intercepted by the high-durability UAVs, which can attain speeds of over 150 kilometers per hour. He said that reservists who specialize in flying UAVs have been mobilized and succeeded in reducing the number of fires over the past week.
‘Life Continues (Almost) as Usual’
Palestinian terrorists have launched more than 600 incendiary kites into Israel since the start of the “March of Return” some 10 weeks ago.
Palestinian terrorists have launched more than 600 incendiary kites into Israel since the start of the “March of Return” some 10 weeks ago.
Despite the IDF’s best efforts to stop the kites in flight, more than 200 have managed to set fire to Israeli fields and property. More than 2,000 acres of wood and farmland have been damaged by the flames, ruining produce worth millions of shekels.
Many of the kites are painted with swastikas, revealing the Palestinian rioters’ intentions and their anti-Semitism.
Students at Sderot’s Sapir Academic College, the largest public college in Israel, displayed similar defiance in the face of Palestinian terrorism after they, too, were faced with burning-kite attacks from Gaza. The college is located less than a mile from the Gaza border.
On Tuesday, the fire reached Sapir’s main gate.
“In spite of the ongoing attacks in the last few weeks, we operated (almost) as usual,” the college heads said in a statement.
College classes, exams and conferences continued as scheduled. Last week, including during the attack, Sapir held its prestigious annual “Cinema South” International Film Festival in the neighboring city of Sderot. The students and guests from Israel and abroad packed the screening halls.
“Sapir serves as a cultural, social, economic and educational anchor and inspiration for the whole Western Negev region. Sapir’s resolve and perseverance sustain the resilience of the Israel’s Gaza border communities, the Negev and the State of Israel,” the College said in a statement.
Calls to Shoot Kite Fliers
Due to the lack of a comprehensive solution to this low-tech, inexpensive weapon, there have been increasing calls in Israel to shoot the kite fliers, just like any other terrorist threatening the country.
Due to the lack of a comprehensive solution to this low-tech, inexpensive weapon, there have been increasing calls in Israel to shoot the kite fliers, just like any other terrorist threatening the country.
On Saturday, the IDF identified a group of Palestinians preparing balloons with explosive devices attached to them to be sent into Israel in order to ignite fires and cause extensive damage to Israeli territory.
In response, an IDF aircraft fired a warning shot next to the group. This is the first time IDF has taken such action against the fire kite terrorists.
The IDF “views the use of incendiary balloons and kites with explosive devices attached to them with great severity and will operate to prevent their use.”
3a)Bernie’s smear pushes the Democrats further away from Israel
Presidential contender’s videos boost Hamas terror organization and the Palestinian “right of return.”
By Jonathan Tobin
There was a time when what the socialist representing Vermont in the Senate said about Israel didn’t matter much. But the days of Sen. Bernie Sanders being an irrelevant eccentric are long gone. His surprisingly tough challenge to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries made him the darling of the party’s liberal wing.
That alone would have elevated him to the status of a senior statesman. But with the Democrats essentially leaderless as they begin planning for a 2020 effort to avenge their demoralizing loss to U.S. President Donald Trump, Sanders is making little secret of his desire for another try at the White House. Though he will face a host of a host of other potential challengers, including many who will seek to steal from him the mantle of the candidate of the party’s grassroots, it still sets up Sanders to be a formidable contender in 2020, as well as someone who is viewed as a party spokesman on a range of issues.
That’s why when Sanders publishes videos on his official twitter account denouncing Israel and its defenders, and presenting the “right of return” as a reasonable Palestinian demand and essentially exonerating Hamas for the ongoing violence at the Gaza border, attention should be paid. Whether this is just—as perhaps the dwindling band of centrist Democrats might like to insist—a sign of the senator’s personal extremism or, as other more sanguine political observers might argue, an indicator of the way the debate about the Middle East is increasingly being conducted by many Democrats, the significance of the videos and other statements by Sanders should not be doubted.
While it received relatively little attention as Clinton limped to the finish line in the 2016 primaries, one of the few substantive differences on the issues between the former secretary of state and Sanders was on Israel. Her position was a relatively traditional pro-Israel stance while Sanders was deeply critical of the Jewish state, even to the point of exaggerating Palestinian casualties during the 2014 Gaza war beyond even the false claims made by Hamas.
But Clinton’s defeat—and subsequent party rules changes that will prevent the Washington establishment from becoming unelected superdelegates—mean that the activist base that was already hostile to Israel will have the whip hand in 2020. Their growing strength is also a function of the anger that Trump provokes among Democrats, which has maximized the importance of a “resistance” deeply influenced by intersectional anti-Zionist arguments championed by figures like Women’s March leaders Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour at the expense of more moderate elements.
But while all of that jives with the polling that shows the Democrats are split on Israel while Republicans are lockstep supporters, it doesn’t fully explain why Sanders is going so far in his attacks on Israel.
His support was never enthusiastic and often deeply critical. But in the last several weeks, he hasn’t merely revisited his opposition to Israel’s measures of self-defense in 2014.
Last month, in addition to condemning Israel for using “disproportionate” force to defend itself, Sanders also authored a letter signed by 12 other Senate Democrats that demanded the lifting of the blockade of Gaza. It also solely blamed Israel for the plight of the Palestinians living there; it never once mentioned the word “Hamas” or the fact that opening up access to the strip will essentially be a green light to Iran to ship arms and material to the terrorist group.
But with last week’s Twitter videos, Sanders took another step away from even nominal support for the Jewish state.
The voices of the Palestinians are rarely heard. This is what life is like for those who are living in Gaza under a 10 year blockade:
He has adopted the Palestinian narrative about the “Great March of Return” in total. He not only accepts the blatantly false claim that it is “non-violent,” thereby ignoring the use of Molotov cocktails, stones, firearms and incendiaries that have laid waste to swaths of Israeli fields. He also claims that Hamas wasn’t involved despite the fact that it has already claimed responsibility and admitted that most of those killed while attempting to breach Israel’s border fence were members of the terror group.
Indeed, so tenacious is Sanders’s defense of Hamas that his video condemns three New York Times journalists by name (Bret Stephens, Bari Weiss and even Thomas Friedman, usually a stiff critic of Israel) who have pointed out that what the terror group is doing is sacrificing the lives of Palestinians for the sake of a photo op and bad publicity for Israel.
Just as interesting is the way Sanders presents the “right of return” as an unexceptionable demand of people living in misery. As even Vermont socialists should know, “return” means eradicating the Jewish state—something the marchers and their Hamas bosses haven’t been shy about discussing with the media. While his office has claimed that the video did no more than discuss the Palestinian position, if Sanders were really an advocate of the two-state solution, then he might have condemned an idea that is incompatible with any idea of peace, as well as the Islamist tyranny that has ruled Gaza with an iron fist.
In doing so, Sanders isn’t merely taking another step away from the Democrats’ former position as a pro-Israel party. He’s laying down a marker that other liberal contenders in 2020 will have to either match or oppose as they compete for the presidency. What this means is that unlike 2016—when the argument among Democrats was one about how supportive to be of Israel—in 2020 the question may be whether you agree with Hamas about destroying the Jewish nation, in essence rendering the position of the left-wing J Street lobby that, at least officially, saw itself as “pro-Israel “and pro-peace” even more irrelevant.
Pro-Israel Democrats are hereby put on notice that a fight for the soul of their party is about to begin. Those who don’t wish to stand with Sanders and Hamas are going to need to find their voices—and a candidate—if they don’t want their party to become a stronghold of hate against Israel in the coming years.
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4)
4)
Kim Jong Un Offers to Host Peace Talks Between United States and Canada
SINGAPORE —One day before his summit with Donald J. Trump, the North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un, has offered to host peace talks between the United States and Canada.
Speaking to reporters at his hotel in Singapore, Kim said that the rising tensions between the North American neighbors were posing an “intolerable threat to world peace.”
In addition to offering to host U.S.-Canada talks in Pyongyang, Kim urged the immediate creation of a demilitarized zone along the border separating the two hostile nations.
“In exchange for Canadian Mounties agreeing to stand down on their side of the border, the United States, in turn, would dismantle its nuclear weapons,” Kim said.
Although stating that “North Korea stands ready and willing to be an honest broker” in peace talks between the two countries, he urged Trump to dial back the “inflammatory rhetoric” that he aimed at Canadians over the weekend.
“Violent language and threats have no place in international diplomacy,” Kim said.
4a)
When Vladimir Putin ordered his hackers to surreptitiously help Donald Trump in the presidential race, he could hardly have anticipated that once in office, Mr. Trump would so outrageously, destructively and thoroughly alienate America’s closest neighbors and allies as he did at the Group of 7 meeting in Canada. The lame explanation from Mr. Trump’s courtiers, that he needed to look tough for his meeting with Kim Jong-un, made matters worse by implying that he felt he needed to publicly kick friends aside to impress a murderous dictator.
Nations represented at the meeting — and especially Canada, whose prime minister, Justin Trudeau, was personally insulted in a way defying basic social norms — reacted with horror and dismay. International diplomacy cannot be conducted by “fits of anger,” said President Emmanuel Macron of France, who Mr. Trump only recently embraced in Washington. “In a matter of seconds, you can destroy trust with 280 Twitter characters,” said the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas. Editorials were less restrained: “When roused, we don’t roll over at the request of an insulting bully, no matter how big,” hissed Canada’s Globe and Mail.
Indeed, the Group of 7 was just the kind of forum a bully like Mr. Trump cannot abide, not out of geopolitical considerations, but because he cannot dominate and preen. He knew he would be on the defensive — over backing out of the Paris environment accord and the Iran nuclear deal, and now over the tariffs he slapped on European and Canadian steel and aluminum — so he made a point of being late, acting petulant, leaving early and lashing out at Mr. Trudeau.That behavior, at a meeting intended to project a unified front on the major economic issues of the day, seemed to summarize all the damage and insults Mr. Trump has thrown at the community of democratic nations. The allies had been wary of Mr. Trump from the outset, given his aversion to international organizations and multilateral trade agreements, his conviction that the United States is being ripped off by its military allies and trade partners, and his impatience for the details of foreign affairs. But there was a lingering hope, most recently demonstrated by Mr. Macron’s chummy state visit to Washington, that he would respond to old allies and grow into his office.
But no. Instead, as photographs from the Quebec resort showed, Mr. Trump faced the other leaders with arms defiantly crossed and face locked in a pout. It was a confirmation that so long as Mr. Trump is in the White House, and maybe beyond that, something fundamental in the community of Western democracies will be missing. America, the leader of the free world and the architect of so much of the modern world order, had decided to go its own way.
For the six other Group of 7 nations, this must be a time of resolve and unity. For Americans, it’s past time to recognize that this president has transformed “America First” into “America Alone,” and that this is the last place a great and powerful nation wants to be.
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