Sweden is just the latest victim of president Trump’s free wheeling relationship with the truth. He’s already insulted most of our allies and frightened the rest but what happens when a crisis hits? People in Sweden are calling him “a Swedish meatball,” and comparing him to the Muppets’ mock-Swedish chef.
What will happen when President Trump calls on Sweden to supply peacekeeping troops the next time there is a crisis? It began in 1949 and by the 1960s Swedish peacekeepers accounted for 10% of the total number of UN peacekeepers.
President Trump wants rule from fear.
Will anyone in power believe him?
Apparently Mr. Trump missed number 210 of Aesop’s Fables about the boy who cried wolf. Once you get a reputation for playing fast and loose with the truth it becomes almost impossible to get serious people to believe you.
Obama’s Director of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance says the Trump White House will fail in any real crisis because he “is undermining every crisis mgmt [ management] tool USG [US Government] has in its arsenal.”
Every President in recent decades has faced an international medical crisis of some sort from AIDS to Ebola but no one will believe President Trump when he tries to get control of the next national or international disaster.
Core supporters
President Trump's core supporters, non-college educated white men and women living in rural America, are supporting him powerfully as are most non-office holder Republicans, but those make up only about 35% of the U.S. He is losing support among college-educated whites and independents which is why his approval ratings hover around 40%.
President Trump is at war with his own intelligence community and has said of the press, “it is the enemy of the American People!” But is it a good thing when the President gets his news from features on Fox News instead of from the CIA and ends up insulting Sweden? What if Fox misses a sneak attack while Trump is having dinner?
The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 17, 2017
War hero Senator John McCain has said of Trump's attack on the free press “this is how dictators get started.”
Fox turns on Trump
With President Trump attacking the press every single day, this is becoming so dangerous that even Fox News is now criticizing President Trump.
When his long-time conservative support media base begins to question his veracity and challenges him then even President Trump may begin to realize he can’t govern the world’s most powerful country with repeated lies and attacks on the press (no0t to mention a budding war with the Swedes) only meant to deflect from his connection with Russia (part of the Fox comments.) After all, Rupert Murdoch still owns a gigantic world-wide media empire and having the press attacked daily can't be good for business.
On today of all days (President's Day in the US) it is instructive to look to the founders of our American Republic such as that left-wing radical, Thomas Jefferson, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
Of course Brits may have a slightly different view of the founding fathers in the US, after that little fracas in 1776 and the crisis again in 1812, but we forgave you for burning down The White House and it's hard to argue with Thomas Jefferson.
