Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:38 pm
It is now widely known that Donald Trump has already experienced his first major foreign policy blunder and that it has to do with China, one of the most powerful countries on the planet. The breadth of Trump’s mistake is staggering, and the ignorance of he and his supporters something to behold, as Newsweek‘s Kurt Eichenwald explained this morning on twitter:
“There are so many self-assured tweets from Trump supporters that clearly know nothing about foreign policy on China that it is breathtaking.”
One would imagine that the fact that China has lodged an official complaint over the incident would have some meaning, but apparently, Trump and his followers are serious about facts being passé.
In a series of tweets, Eichenwald then proceeded to lecture Donald Trump on what he has done and how to go about fixing it. First, he informs Trump that he has violated a policy going all the way back to Republican president Richard M. Nixon:
Only way @realDonaldTrump can fix this diplomatic disaster is to publicly state if he supports USA's One-China policy dating back to Nixon.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 3, 2016
Second, if Trump doesn’t believe Eichenwald, he can check with conservative China experts, who will fill him in:
All @realDonaldTrump has to do is call ANY conservative China expert. Use Heritage Foundation. They will explain Taiwan blunder & how 2 fix.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 3, 2016
The rest is self-explanatory, or would be if we were dealing with anyone but Trump:
…but 4 Trump supporters defending Trump China blunder, ur showing u know nothing on US/China/Taiwan history & why we have this US policy.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 3, 2016
Trump defended himself by pointing to weapons sales:
Interesting how the U.S. sells Taiwan billions of dollars of military equipment but I should not accept a congratulatory call.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 3, 2016
To which Eichenwald answered,
By playing defense – using dumb website args about weapon sales 2 Taiwan – Trump is showing deep ignorance and making China situation worse.
— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) December 3, 2016
We are dealing, obviously, with a Trump who believes ignorance is the answer to uncongenial facts. He either doesn’t know and doesn’t care to know, or does know and just doesn’t care, as his numerous missed intelligence briefings suggest.
He had already proven himself unworthy of the office he now occupies in a dozen different ways, but one event stands out, and that is when China disrespected President Obama and Trump reacted by saying he would have left in a huff.
Trump lacks both the temperament and the judgment to serve as president, and if this recent fiasco is be the norm for Trump’s foreign policy (he has also upset India by saying he is going to visit Pakistan), the entire world is in for a rocky four years, and Trump won’t have to actively dismantle NATO; it will simply be torn apart as a result of Trump being Trump.
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