Trump Is a Vulgar National Disgrace on a State Trip

Again. This time on a trip to Japan, where he profoundly embarrassed the United States, and his host, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, by refusing to put down his fucking phone and stop tweeting execrable garbage about his political opponents nearly 7,000 miles back home — despite the long U.S. presidential tradition of setting aside domestic politics while on diplomatic trips abroad, and despite the fact that he was the first foreign leader to meet with the newly-enthroned Emperor Naruhito.

Donald Trump has no respect for his own country, nor for any others. He is an abject embarrassment on the world stage.

Annie Karni at the New York Times reports:

It was just after 6 a.m. on the final day of a state visit to Japan designed to flatter and entertain him, and [Donald] Trump was in his comfort space: Twitter.

Hours earlier, he had been the honored guest at an extravagant six-course dinner — turbot, steak, a Mount Fuji-shaped dessert — with Japan's new emperor at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. Ahead of the president was a visit to a military base near the capital, his fourth straight day at the side of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But Mr. Trump's mind was, again, preoccupied by politics at home.

...The president's closest ally on the world stage, Mr. Abe, regaled him with golf, a sumo tournament, a cheeseburger lunch, and a robatayaki dinner, hoping to cement what the prime minister described as their "unshakable bond."

Throughout his visit, though, Mr. Trump acted like a man who could never be fully present. From start to finish, his stay in Japan was defined more by his focus on politics at home than diplomacy abroad, expressed as a running refrain posted online seemingly every time he was left alone with his screens.

From his particular fixation on Mr. Biden to his constant castigation of Democrats over all, Mr. Trump underlined the reality that his "unshakable bond" was with his Twitter megaphone. It was evident that his main interest was not where his hosts had gone to such lengths to direct it — on security and trade in Asia — but instead was on fighting with his perceived political enemies in Washington.

Trump tweeted about Joe Biden and the 1994 crime bill, "the Russian Collusion Delusion," and, before he even left the Imperial Banquet, the Democrats' desire for "a Do-Over on Mueller!"

And that still wasn't even the nadir.

The worst insult to his hosts came in a tweet that ultimately defined the trip. In it, Mr. Trump played down concerns about North Korea's recent tests of short-range ballistic missiles, undercutting declarations by Mr. Abe and the president's own national security adviser that the launches violated United Nations resolutions.

"I have confidence that Chairman Kim will keep his promise to me, & also smiled when he called Swampman Joe Biden a low IQ individual, & worse," Mr. Trump wrote early on the first full day of his visit, referring to Kim Jong-un of North Korea, before a round of golf with Mr. Abe. "Perhaps that's sending me a signal?"

In a joint news conference with Mr. Abe the next day, Mr. Trump broke the third wall, expressing out loud on the world stage the same sentiments he had been tapping out throughout the trip online.

"Kim Jong-un made a statement that Joe Biden is a low-I.Q. individual," Mr. Trump said from the ornate Akasaka State Guest House. "He probably is, based on his record. I think I agree with him on that."

Ghastly. Not only did Trump downplay recent North Korean "missile testing and its potential threat to Japan, saying Pyongyang 'seems to have stopped' rocket testing and predicting 'lots of good things," but he quoted and agreed with the dictator behind those missile launches right in the face of the man representing their intended target, in order to insult one of his political opponents back home, who is himself a former vice-president of the United States.

It's absolutely breathtaking (if entirely unsurprising).

Trump really outdid himself this time. He is dangerously insulting. And I am a broken record who will end yet another piece by saying: Impeach him now.