Went Over Like a Lead Turd

 

You know, taking your weird-ass conspiracy-theorist Pizzagate asshole friend along with you on serious European business all by itself is a whole kind of offensive fuckup.  Oh, wait, maybe that was a Hegseth team fuck up.  The down with America, up with Russia dipshit horror shows were so boldly evident at this flea circus display from the supposed America First crowd I guess I got confused. Hegseth was the one who told everyone we ain't got no navy to speak of so don't count on us and we can bug out our military presence in Europe so don't get too comfortable. 

I say wild ass shit when I'm hungover too, so I guess the Fox News veteran's words aren't all that surprising to me. 

But JD Vance being a condescending and unpleasant pro-Putin scold with no sense of irony is also not surprising to me. He chided Europe for lack of freedom of speech while at home, AP was being barred from the White House and Air Force One because their style guide stays with the more (for 400+ years) appropriate "Gulf of Mexico". And while Tom Homan hates on people who want to use the First Amendment to tell undocumented people about the other rights they have under the Constitution. 

Elon Musk Goes Full Ford

 

It's not too soon to talk about Henry Ford being a whole racist who bought a newspaper just be extra-racist and who that reminds me of, right? Wow. But anyway, Elon Musk on the social media site he purchased to pretend to be a nonpartisan free speech warrior endorsed AfD which is pretty outstanding neo-Nazi stuff. They are pro-Putin and anti-NATO compared to the rest of Germany for the most part. The big thing is the neo-Nazi thing, though. They are even against climate change science, which I thought the head of Tesla would understand is crucial!

I don't think we should be so quick to define Musk. His own father tells us he isn't exactly what we think he is:

A Presidential Trip Abroad 3: NATO Friends, Right?

The discussion of President Trump's by-now-notorious handshakes will be a study for future scholars, if there are any. French President Emmanuel Macron is not an especially tall man, but he has apparently worked on his grip so as to discomfit the American President, at least whilst seated. (Canadian PM Justin Trudeau, tall and rather fit, has done the best at blocking Trump's peculiar use of what should be a friendly greeting as a dominance display.) You can tell by the straightened state of Trump's grin that he feels this grip in the central vicinity of his man-spread.

Well done, Macron! I have to say, this particular silver-back primate thing Trump does annoys me because it is so transparently a dominance thing. It is without subtlety or chill. It is all brittle manhood and schoolyard bully. Shake hands like an adult, Trump! So embarrassing. (Was he raised indoors by people?)

But this is just a symbol of his general world-stage awkwardness. He also muscled Montenegro PM Dusko Markovic out of his way, lumbering to the front of a photo line-up. (Was this political or just how Trump usually treats other people when there are cameras? One can scarcely answer.) He belabored a point that hasn't actually got any ground regarding US taxpayers somehow being out of pocket regarding NATO allies not quite paying quite what they should on defense spending (2% of GDP). But the language he uses is way inexact and our allies think he's a tool for bringing it up, actually.

Trump seems to be aware he isn't greatly loved (I would say Brussels underscored that for him) in Europe and he has his weird talk about trade (Globalization from say, the late 1980's to present, seems to have missed him, huh? What he knows about manufacturing I could shove in my navel and still have room for a blue whale.) that seems about vengeance rather than economic realities (probably because former President Obama had a better crowd than him. That Vienna-sausage-fingered struggle is apparently all too real.)

I found him embarrassing and ill-suited to the world stage. But keep in mind, this is Trump just doing diplomatic pose-downs in a controlled environment that doesn't encourage his discomfiture. He isn't taking the kinds of questions we have for him right here in the US. And as he keeps right on tripping, I know questions continue to pile up.