Donald Trump just got steamrolled
It was bad enough that Donald Trump got steamrolled by the Prime Minister of Canada on Tuesday when his administration badly needed that country to cave and make any sort of a trade deal on the tariffs that are going as poorly as anyone would imagine.
Things got considerably worse later on in the day when he was briefed on India’s missile attack on neighboring Pakistan, after tensions were rising between the countries for some time. If you don’t see what the big deal is, bear in mind that both countries have nuclear weapons, so saber rattling between them has some pretty big implications for the rest of the world.
Imagine then – the president saying “I hope it ends very quickly,” and declining to comment further – after he’s just implied he barely knows how to find either country on a globe. That was basically the scene at the Oval Office, where Donald Trump was holding a swearing-in ceremony for one of his new appointees and dismissed the whole episode as “they’ve been fighting for centuries” – which can’t possibly be true as they haven’t existed as countries for centuries.
Much further than making deals that secure world peace like he promised during the election, the world is considerably closer to real escalation and danger, and Donald Trump can’t even be bothered to know the basics. Tuesday’s episode is probably the clearest instance yet that he shouldn’t be in charge.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making