An Ugly American Berates the UN and Embarrasses America

The Felon addressed the United Nations earlier this week and put on a display that was both cringe worthy and an embarrassment to America. Much of his hour long address was rambling and semi-coherent and filled with insults to allies and batshit craziness involving the Felon's strange obsessions, including babbling about windmills and cows.  Sadly, the deranged Felon is the face of this nation and  one can only image that China and Russia were snickering as they watched the supposed leader of the west look like he escaped a mental institution.  Needless to say, much of MAGA world liked the farcical performance as they view "toughness", no matter how deranged as a positive. Meanwhile, America's economy is tanking and the federal government is likely shutting down in three days as Republicans who control the White House, Senate and House of Representatives cannot get their act together on anything save for blocking a full release of the Epstein files. The Founding Fathers must be spinning in their graves given that the Felon is the embodiment of what they most feared. Rather than saving the nation, the Electoral College - which needs to be abolished - largely was responsible for the Felon's election and the growing threat that the nation is sliding towards a dictatorship. A piece at Salon looks at the deranged address and the manner in which America was humiliated.  Here are highlights:

[T]he [Felon’s] president’s performance is that of raw and corrupt power, and being freed from nearly all constraints on his behavior. For his MAGA supporters, such a role model and leader is exciting and cathartic.

Ultimately, the world is his stage, and he is going to command it for as long as he can. But Trump’s stage isn’t just symbolic — it has extreme real-world consequences. What begins as performance ends as policy. On Tuesday, Trump addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York City.

Like a wrestling promo crossed with insult comedy, Trump mocked the UN building (“a bad escalator and a bad teleprompter”), bragged (“I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell”) and feigned toughness on Russia (a “paper tiger”). He said that America’s NATO allies need to do more to help Ukraine, defended fossil fuel energy and declared climate change to be “the greatest con job ever.” He castigated European countries for being too “nice” to immigrants and migrants because Europe’s (white) “heritage” is being poisoned by supposed hordes of strange (brown) “foreigners.”

Talking for nearly an hour, Trump held little back. The UN, he declared, is useless: “What is the purpose of the United Nations? . . . . Trump also returned to his obsessive hatred of windmills, and he is now apparently very concerned about cows: “We don’t want cows anymore. I guess they want to kill all the cows.” 

Last year, the delegates laughed at the [Felon] president. This year, they sat in stunned silence.

Trump’s surreal speech was “coarse absurdist theater,” communications scholar Marcel Danesi said. But, he warned, “it would be naïve to think that Trump does not know what he is doing. He does. As Orwell feared, the absurd does not manifest itself only by making language meaningless, but also by the cruelty of unrestrained power, and the ultimate failure of resistance against devastating political oppression.”

Unrestrained power, of course, is the president’s raison d’être. And his UN address was particularly unhinged, even for Trump. Instead of believing that conflicts can be resolved collectively, the key tenet of President Franklin Roosevelt’s vision for the UN, Trump is resolute that global problems can only be repaired by strongmen like him who, he claimed again, “ended seven wars.”

“There’s never been anything like that,” he said. “Very honoured to have done it. It’s too bad that I had to do these things instead of the United Nations doing them. And sadly, in all cases, the United Nations did not even try to help in any of them…All I got from the United Nations was an escalator that, on the way up, stopped right in the middle.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul said that Trump’s address was unequivocal in its embrace “of his foreign policy philosophy — unilateralism.” 

“President Trump does not believe that the United Nations or most other multilateral organizations serve U.S. national interests,” McFaul observed. “He prefers to go it alone. And he has backed up these words with actions in both his first and second terms, pulling out of many international treaties and multilateral institutions.”

McFaul raised the specter of Trump withdrawing American participation in the UN. “Through participation in the UN, we can more closely align this organization with American interests. If we exit, we will allow China to take over completely.”

Trump made it clear that his MAGA agenda isn’t just domestic — it’s global. Since he returned to office in January, his attempts to pull the U.S. away from its democratic allies and into the orbit of authoritarian countries has accelerated. 

The speech was rooted in “an American First foreign policy,” . . . . “This most notably included his repeating that America is for Americans, and not a place where immigrants will be widely welcomed.” 

In short, Poast said, the president characterized the world as filled with “chaos and disorder” before his return to office, and “peaceful and prosperous” since his inauguration in January.

This claim is, of course, laughable. From Gaza to Ukraine, from Syria to Congo, the world is full of wars and hot spots. In such an era, the fact that the American president decided to blather and bluster instead of attempting to offer workable proposals is nothing short of an embarrassment. 

In his speech, Trump pitched his return to office as opening a new era of American greatness. “On the world stage, America is respected again like it has never been respected before,” he said. “You think about two years ago, three years ago, four years ago or one year ago, we were a laughing stock all over the world.”

A new poll from YouGov shows that a majority of Americans (51%) disagree with the president’s assessment. Twenty-nine percent agree, while 21% are not sure. 

Thom Hartmann, the progressive radio talk show host, reported that, after Trump’s speech, callers to his show were “embarrassed, horrified and even feeling humiliated by how he is making the country and the American people look.”

His behavior was that of the infamous Ugly American. Ethnocentric, rude to others while traveling abroad in their own countries, ignorant of the world, self-absorbed, arrogant, rude — these are the very characteristics of America’s president.

And in many ways, Donald Trump is America. That is an uncomfortable truth many Americans still have yet to face. But if it were not true at some deep level, Trump would not have been elected president twice, and he would not be threatening now to remain in power forever — an outcome that many Americans would welcome.

Based on his reception at the UN, it’s also one that many more around the world would regard with horror.

Be very afraid.