Trump Is Making America a Pariah

Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to "Make America Great Again," which, in his first year in office, he has utterly failed to do by any reasonable metric — and always will, since his idea of "greatness" is terrible.

He has, however, Made America Garbage Around the World. #MAGAW

Julian Borger at the Guardian reports:

Global confidence in US leadership has fallen to a new low, and the country now ranks below China in worldwide approval ratings, according to a new Gallup poll.

The survey of opinion in 134 countries showed a record collapse in approval for the US role in the world, from 48% under Obama to 30% after one year of Donald Trump — the lowest level Gallup has recorded since beginning its global leadership poll over a decade ago.

The result comes after a separate Gallup survey found that Trump reaches the first anniversary of his inauguration with the lowest average approval rating of any elected president in his first year.

...The latest study confirms some of the worst fears of foreign policy analysts in the US and Europe that Trump's "America first" approach, combined with his volatile and irascible personality, is weakening cohesion among western democracies in the face of a growing challenge from autocracies in Russia and China, and the rise of illiberal democracies and xenophobic nationalism inside Europe.

Germany is now seen as a global leader by many more people (41% of the sample), with China in second place on 31%. Russia has 27% approval for its global role according to the poll.

In just under half of the world's countries — 65 out of 134 — US standing collapsed, by 10 percentage points or more. Some of the biggest losses were among Washington's closest allies in western Europe, Australia, and Latin America.

One of the sharpest declines in confidence in US leadership was in the UK, where it dropped by 26 percentage points. A third of Britons questioned in the new poll expressed approval, with 63% voicing disapproval.

"This year marks a significant change in our trends," wrote Gallup's managing partner, Jon Clifton. "Only 30% of the world, on average, approves of the job performance of the US's leadership, down from 48% in 2016. In fact, more people now disapprove of US leadership than approve. This historic low puts the US's leadership approval rating on par with China's and sets a new bar for disapproval."

Surely this cannot come as a surprise to anyone who knows anything about world affairs. Presumably, that includes most members of the U.S. political press, and yet they treated the last presidential election like it was a fucking game and treated Donald Trump like he was an entertaining clown, instead of a reckless authoritarian who would never do anything else but plunge the United States into chaos and despair were he to reach the Oval Office.

And, yes, we cannot underestimate the role that Russia played in elevating him to that position, not to mention millions of bigoted Americans who cast votes for him, but the fact that this inevitable result of a Trump presidency was not the centerpiece of all discussion around Trump's candidacy, rather than an inexplicable bid to normalize his radical extremism, accompanied by the humiliation as hysterics of the people who did predict this and followed by the relentless admonishments to "give him a chance" once he was elected, is a shame on the U.S. political press which should never be forgotten.