Friday Trump reacted to a terrorist train bombing in London by calling for an expansion of his Muslim travel ban and calling the resulting legal restrictions on it “stupidly politically correct, then irritated the hell out of British authorities by Tweeting information that severely compromised Scotland Yard’s investigation into the attack.
This could result in British intelligence and law enforcement authorities refusing to share sensitive information with the United States about international terrorist groups they are pursuing, making us vulnerable to threats we could have identified and neutralized with the kind of international cooperation that has prevented any major terror attack in the USA since 9/11/2001.
In what would have been the worst day in office for any another president, but just one more day in Donaldland, Trump also threatened to censor the internet under the guise of preventing terrorist recruitment on the web, while claiming he had made more progress against ISIS in 9 months than President Obama had for 8 years, ignoring the fact that ISIS was not a threat to anyone until early 2014, a 6-year discrepancy that went unnoticed by his beloved “poorly educated” base.
And this was not even his worst day of Week 35.
This week marked the 72nd Annual UN General Assembly, a gathering of world leaders convened to address the greatest international problems facing humanity and set the UN Agenda for the year. This year’s theme is “Focusing on People: Striving for Peace and a Decent Life for All on a Sustainable Planet.”
Unique in that all 193 member nations get an equal vote not subject to veto by the Security Council, the General Assembly is not meant to be dominated by rich and powerful nations, but to give a voice to all; the big, the small and the other side of the wall.
That was before Donald Trump, still angry after several weeks of being summarily pushed off the front pages by 2 hurricanes and an earthquake. “Focusing on People” other than himself was not on his agenda.
His opening remarks at the UN were remarkably restrained in their vagueness about how the UN should implement budget-slashing and rules reform, but pretty specific when he named a Trump-owned apartment building on First Avenue, across the street from the United Nations. You know, just in case anyone forgot who’s the big shot rich guy in the room.