MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” panel, full of Republicans, summarized Donald Trump’s trip abroad in two words: it was a “complete disaster.”
“I don’t really care what politicians are saying about a trip they know was a complete disaster,” co-host Joe Scarborough told foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell. “You look at the President’s actions, you look at the gestures–”
“He’s the ugly American,” Mika Brzezinski said, finishing the statement.
“If somebody can find a more disastrous foreign trip since Kennedy’s 1961 summit with Khrushchev, I’d like to know because this was a disaster,” Scarborough added.
Each panelist enumerated specific parts of the trip that turned the whole affair into an unmitigated disaster. Scarborough pointed to the handshake between Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron for evidence.
“He looked like a thug, he looked like a goon. You look at the handshake. You look at this. Just, what a thug. What an embarrassment — he’s mauling him like an idiot! Like an absolute idiot! Just, what an embarrassment to the United States!” Scarborough declared, thoroughly upset.
Scarborough also blasted Trump by pointing to the difference between his behavior in Europe and his behavior in Saudi Arabia.
“He was so deferential in Saudi Arabia, so deferential, and he was just the opposite — he was a bull in the china shop of an alliance that was first built with the blood of young Americans and people across the West by freeing the continent,” Scarborough said. “Then from 1947 forward, we have spent blood, sweat, tears, billions of dollars building an alliance that Donald Trump wants to throw away to make points with Vladimir Putin.”
The first 150 days of the Trump administration have been wrought with scandals, contradictions and missteps. At least two federal investigations are underway about Trump’s camp’s possible ties and collusion with the Russian government that could have influenced the 2016 presidential election. Trump’s deference to the heads of state in the Middle East, as opposed to his alleged mistreatment of European leaders, does not help his cause.
