The source material for this column is found mostly in the Opinion sections of The New York Times and The Washington Post. As we draw closer to 2024 and Trump's lead keeps widening, I can almost hear these poor dears screeching, even though I'm only reading their words.
Their panic delights and energizes me.
I had it narrowed down to two by early Wednesday, and decided on this one because it echoes the Democrats' panic from elections past.
New York Times Opinion hack Thomas B. Edsall wrote a column that worries about what Trump's effect on diplomacy and foreign policy would be. He even asked other lefty "experts" what they thought.
The consensus: CHAOS!
Edsall at least had the decency to admit that the current state of the world isn't exactly something to crow about. He kicks things off with a shout-out to the Robert Kagan Opinion piece in the Washington Post that was the subject of the first installment of this column a couple of weeks ago. The leftists in media may draw their paychecks from different companies, but that's just for show. It's still a hive mind.
Here's what Edsall was after in his article:
If Donald Trump is re-elected, how will the former president — who has openly praised dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who has questioned the value of NATO and who has denigrated key allies — deal with what the Pentagon calls, in O’Hanlon’s words, the “the 4 plus 1 threat matrix — the five main threats of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and transnational violent extremism or terrorism”?
To gauge the range of possible developments in a second Trump administration, I asked specialists in international affairs a series of questions. On the basic question — how damaging to American foreign policy interests would a second Trump administration be? — the responses ranged from very damaging to marginally so.
He then immediately informs us that a woman from the leftist Brookings Institution is "quite worried." She cites John Bolton's sour-grapes book about Trump as one source for her worry.
This is like saying you will prove that everyone hates the San Francisco Giants by doing interviews at Dodger Stadium.
Relevant: Old School Election Deniers: The Hill Publishes Breathless Op-Ed Whining About Bush vs Gore
Another "expert" that Edsall reached out to is Philipp (yes, two "p"s) Ivanov from the Asia Society Policy Institute, which is — you guessed it — yet another lefty think tank. Ivanov worries that Trump would "undermine the significant efforts of the Biden administration to rebuild, strengthen and reimagine American alliance system in Europe and Asia — from rallying the Europeans to support Ukraine to a comprehensive strengthening of strategic and military relations with Korea, Australia, Japan and Philippines to balance Chinese power."
Ivanov then blah, blahs about Trump making America's image "suffer" in the eyes of the rest of the world.
Suggesting that the Biden years have been some sort of foreign relations dream is a complete rewriting of reality. Anthony Blinken may be the worst Secretary of State ever, and we're only a decade removed from Hillary Clinton's reign of error.
If you're a betting person, the good money is on Volodymyr Zelenskyy and whoever is still breathing at Hamas being the only two world leaders who like what the Biden administration has accomplished on the global stage.
The shtick about the world hating the United States has been said about every Republican president since I've been active in politics. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush were "cowboys" who thought the whole world was the Wild West. Even Papa Bush was scary because of his time at the CIA.
The companion piece to that is always that the Republican we're supposed to worry about will be unraveling the foreign policy perfection of the last Democrat in office. For this conversation, that would mean we're talking about Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and President LOLEightyonemillion.
That's a foreign policy horror movie.
Of course, when they get to Trump, everything has to be turned up to a hyperventilating fever pitch. These idiots actually believe that Trump might pal around with Vladimir Putin. You know, the guy who wasn't invading Ukraine when Trump was in office.
Trump can't throw the world into chaos because it's already there, thanks in large part to Joe Biden. The bad actors on the international stage love it when the United States has a weak president, and boy, has it shown these last three years.
Let us not forget that the security and humanitarian nightmare at our southern border is both a domestic and foreign policy failure. "Chaos" has never had a more fitting example than what Biden has allowed to happen there.
Donald Trump will never be the dictator that these wailing ninnies claim he'll be. If he does return to office, he'll be too busy cleaning up Joe Biden's messes.
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