Trump's New World Order

This afternoon, Donald Trump gave a joint press conference with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro. It was mercifully brief, but he made a notable and rather alarming announcement:

Trump makes the scheduled announcement that he'll designate Brazil a Major Non-NATO Ally, then adds, off-script, "Or even possibly, if you start thinking about it, maybe a NATO ally." He says he'll have to talk to "a lot of people" to make that one happen.

This is abject nonsense, but, like lots of shit Trump says that is abject nonsense, it provides a hint of his future intentions.

We are already well aware of Trump's hostility toward NATO, which predates his presidency, so it's hardly news he's interested in blowing up the crucial alliance.

And it isn't possible for Trump to wave his hand and make Brazil a NATO member state, which even he surely knows. So what is he even saying here?

Well, one of the things we know about Trump is that one of the primary ways he lays the groundwork for his radical proposals is to suggest something impossible, then claim he has to do something extreme (which was the objective all along) because he's being stopped from doing the (impossible) thing he was pretending he wanted to do.

I don't know if he's definitely doing that here, but it whiffs of it to me. And, if he is, then when the far-right Bolsonaro isn't invited with open arms into NATO the moment that NATO-hating Trump demands it, Trump will propose starting a new alliance altogether. An alliance of dictators.

I realize I say this a lot, but it's always true: I hope I'm wrong.