saying that Europe “really must take our fate into our own hands.”
.. Merkel told a packed Bavarian beer hall rally that the days when Europe could rely on others was “over to a certain extent. This is what I have experienced in the last few days.”
.. it was a clear repudiation of Trump’s tough few days with European leaders, even as she held back from mentioning the U.S. president by name. On Thursday, Trump had tough words for German trade behind closed doors. Hours later, he blasted European leaders at NATO for failing to spend enough on defense, while holding back from offering an unconditional guarantee for European security.
.. Trump – who returned from his nine-day international trip on Saturday – had a different take.
“Just returned from Europe. Trip was a great success for America. Hard work but big results!” Trump wrote on Sunday
.. Trump was far more solicitous toward the autocratic king of Saudi Arabia earlier in the week, telling him and other leaders of Muslim-majority countries – many of them not democratically elected – that he was not “here to lecture.” Days later in Brussels he offered a scathing assessment of Washington’s closest allies, saying they were being “unfair” to American taxpayers.
.. “The belief in shared values has been shattered by the Trump administration,” said Stephan Bierling
.. Merkel has expressed willingness to jolt her nation’s military spending upwards, a first step both to answering American criticism that it falls far short of NATO pledges and to lessening its dependence on the U.S. security blanket. Germany hiked its military spending by $2.2 billion this year, to $41 billion, but it remains far from being able to stand on its own militarily.
Trump Faces Tensions at G-7 Summit
The two-day summit offers leaders a major opportunity to confront the new U.S. administration on a range of divisive issues that also include relations with Russia and immigration. The talks will culminate in a final communique on Saturday.
.. “No doubt this will be the most challenging G-7 summit in years,”
.. He also declined to explicitly endorse NATO’s common defense provision, to the disappointment of some European diplomats.
.. Germany’s large trade surplus with the U.S. has been a persistent source of anger for Mr. Trump.
Watch Out World, Trump’s Coming
while visiting both Saudi Arabia and Israel is a welcome gesture, Richard Nixon tried the same thing in 1974, and nobody was distracted.
.. It’s true that during the campaign Trump suggested the Saudis were somehow involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, that they “push gays off buildings” and “kill women and treat women horribly.” On the other hand, he also told one rally that he got along “great with all of them. They buy apartments from me. They spend $40 million, $50 million. Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much.”
Whatever else you complain about, give the man credit for flexibility.
.. Peter Baker reported in The Times that as heads of state were preparing for the big trip, all of them were being primed to remember to bring up that Electoral College thing a lot.
.. Pope Francis, with whom Trump conducted a verbal war over wall-building. But that’s all over, and the president now clearly appreciates Francis as the great moral leader he is. (“I think he’s got a lot of personality.”)
.. When the meeting is over, the other people at the table often come away very pleased with themselves, unaware he has already forgotten everything they said.
.. The Vatican talk will probably be about refugees and immigration. It’s possible Francis will feel they had a real meeting of the minds. The president will recall that the pope is shorter than he is.
.. There definitely is something about him that makes people want to increase their defense budgets.
.. Trump has spent his entire political career warning Americans that “the world is laughing at us.” But now it really, really is. Europe is awash in stories about the two-to-four-minute limit on remarks during the NATO discussions.
What Fans of The Handmaid’s Tale Prefer to Ignore
To picture a near-future United States that is a Christian theocracy with open, systematic, and brutal oppression of women, you have to picture some unbelievable changes occurring very quickly: repealing women’s right to vote; a re-acceptance of slavery; widespread Christian acceptance of government-mandated extramarital sexual intercourse; total repeal of the First Amendment; total bans on any other religious beliefs (there are references to “Baptist rebels”). Perhaps most absurdly, almost all men have accepted a regime where the only sexual outlet of any kind is government-monitored breeding with the fertile “handmaids,” reserved for the most powerful
Do you picture lots of American men signing on for asystem that denies them the freedom to have sex with women? You really have to have your “all men have fascist impulses just under their skin” blinders on tohear that and nod, “Oh, yeah, that could totally happen.”
But Margaret Atwood could have set her tale in other places and made it practically a modern-day documentary: say, Saudi Arabia. Or any corner ofTaliban-controlled Afghanistan.
.. Married women may not obtain a passport or travel outside the country without the written permission of their husbands.
.. Iran
.. The UN Children’s Rights Committee reported in March that the age of marriage for girls is 13, that sexual intercourse with girls as young as nine lunar years was not criminalized, and that judges had discretion torelease some perpetrators of so-called honor killings without any punishment. Child marriage—though not the norm—continues, as the law allows girls to marry at 13 and boys at age 15, as well as at younger ages if authorized by a judge. Authorities continue to prevent girls and women from attending certain sporting events, including men’s soccer and volleyball matches.
.. The world has plenty of awful places that can be fairly compared to Atwood’s fictional dystopian regime of Gilead. They’re just mostly Muslim.
Does This Administration Know What It Doesn’t Know?
.. Take a look at President Trump’s inner circle: Vice President Mike Pence, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, Senior Counselor Steve Bannon, First Daughter Ivanka, First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner, Chief Economic Adviser Gary Cohn, and Counselor Kellyanne Conway…
Only Pence has spent any significant time dealing with the federal government from the inside as aCongressman. Most of those figures have been around politics, but haven’t necessarily been around government. And obviously, Trump himself has never worked in government.
.. That’s my best explanation about how the administration could spend weeks trying to figure out how to fund and pass a massive infrastructure bill, while at the same time, at least $20 billion worth of big energy-infrastructure projects — 15 of them in 14 states, all 100 percent privately funded and all holding the potential to create thousands of new construction jobs — are sitting in front of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, awaiting approval. FERC can’t give approval until it has a quorum, which it has lacked since the beginning of February.
The blame can’t be put on the Senate for taking too long with the nominees; the administration hasn’t nominated anyone yet.
.. The administration has a big, public promise — rebuild America’s infrastructure! — and an easy way to get toit, by staffing up FERC and getting those projects approved. But they’re simply not getting around to it because… they’re just not on top of things.
.. So Trump said his assessment of NATO’s obsolescence was based on not knowing much about it, and now he knows more and feels NATO is improving.