aNewDomain – Donald Trump returned empty-handed today from his first foreign policy venture as global tough guy and presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
In true Reality vs Reality TV style, UK Prime Minister David Cameron today refused to apologize for calling Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims “stupid, divisive and wrong.” So much for the Trump camp’s demand that he either issue an apology or retract those remarks.
Not only did Cameron refuse to retract his remarks from earlier this year, but he reiterated his view that Trump’s proposal for banning was Muslims was wrong, is wrong and will remain wrong. And he gave detailed reasons why.
You gotta love Cameron’s Churchillian rhetorical scheme. But that’s not the big takeaway.
Throughout the primaries, Trump has been roaring about how he was going to make countries like China, Russia, North Korea and Syria get in line. From now on, they will have to respect the US as being the hypo-macho global generalissimo. Pax Americana, America First and all that.
But he can’t even make the Brits bow down — not even a little.
Look, Britain is no China. It’s the closest ally of the United States. The US and the UK have a special relationship, to use a term going all the way back to World War II. And David Cameron is no liberal Blairite, either. He’s a Tory, a proud conservative of the Thatcher strain.
He’s the head of that country’s conservatives.
If this is how things are going to be, the outlook looks mighty rough for Mr. Wannabe Tough-Guy-in-Chief. Hell, he can’t even make Britain back down and release just a sheepish little, “Oops, my bad.”
Watch this:
And here are Cameron’s comments from today, delivered at the beginning of a meeting with the Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. Notice that Cameron stood by his earlier comments with an appropriate amount of subtlety — right up until he came to the quotable moment:
The whole issue surfaced four months ago when the UK was publicly considering banning Trump from the whole country — just because of his hate speech.
In fact, more than a half million Brits had asked that Trump be banned from the UK for suggesting that Muslims should or could be banned from the United States. That was when Cameron told the House of Commons that he didn’t think a travel ban was warranted and blasted Trump’s comments as “stupid.”
Listen. If Trump’s supporters think that a flippant cavalier president is somehow going to make the rest of the world bend to our will, they will be sadly disappointed.
Reporters at Cameron’s meeting today noticed that Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe actually chuckled when a reporter mentioned the possibility of Trump presiding over the next G7 meeting.
That is to say: He laughed.
So Trump has already become an object of ridicule overseas. Even the excessively polite Japanese aren’t much afraid to show it.
Maybe Trump will be able to get such leaders to respect him, if he’s elected, simply by causing them to giggle themselves to death.
For aNewDomain, I’m Tom Ewing.
Image credits: VergeCampus.com, All Rights Reserved.
