"He seems to think the world started when he took office."

So, Donald Trump's display of bellicose escalation with North Korea over the past few days has made unavoidably evident that the poor temperament about which his detractors warned is as bad, if not worse, than even the most cynical of us anticipated. He is catastrophically unfit for the presidency, and his resounding failures are a serious threat to global safety.

At BuzzFeed, Alberto Nardelli reports on What European Diplomats Really Think About Donald Trump — and this was before their worst fears began to play out on the international stage.

I highly recommend reading the whole piece, but here is an excerpt:

Even before the latest escalation of nuclear threats between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un's North Korea, senior diplomats and officials from the US's European allies have been warning that the US president's approach to world affairs is extremely dangerous – pointing to his apparent ignorance of other countries' history, his unfiltered use of social media, and the lack of a strong, experienced team around him.

In interviews with BuzzFeed News, six top European government officials who've had firsthand dealings on the international stage with Trump and his administration describe a president regarded even by allies as erratic and limited, and whose perceived shortcomings are compounded by the ongoing chaos beneath him in the White House.

...On one level, the officials said, he is something of a laughing stock among Europeans at international gatherings. One revealed that a small group of diplomats play a version of word bingo whenever the president speaks because they consider his vocabulary to be so limited. "Everything is 'great', 'very, very great', 'amazing'," the diplomat said.

But behind the mocking, there is growing fear among international governments that Trump is a serious threat to international peace and stability.

"He has no historical view. He is only dealing with these issues now, and seems to think the world started when he took office," a diplomat told BuzzFeed News, pointing to Trump's remarks and tweets about defence spending. "He thinks that NATO existed only to keep the communists out of Europe. He has a similar attitude in Asia-Pacific with Japan, ignoring that the US basically wrote their constitution." During his presidential campaign, Trump called out Japan to pay more for the security US provides, including for hosting the US troops in the country. Japan's constitution restricts its military options.

They also believe Trump's foreign policy is chiefly driven by an obsession with unravelling Barack Obama's policies. "It's his only real position," one European diplomat said. "He will ask: 'Did Obama approve this?' And if the answer is affirmative, he will say: 'We don't.' He won't even want to listen to the arguments or have a debate. He is obsessed with Obama."

The officials interviewed are not identified, but I suspect that most if not all of them have met and interacted with Hillary Clinton. If not, they are all certainly aware of her reputation — her esteemed diplomatic skills, her legendary depth of knowledge and preparedness, her capacity to build a solid support team.

They must boggle that we had the opportunity to elect Clinton, that she won the popular vote, and still they have to deal with Trump.