Sixty-eight minutes in Biarritz: A glimpse into Trump's unorthodox mind
BIARRITZ, France — For many minutes on Monday, President Trump stood on foreign soil at the close of the Group of Seven summit here and trashed his predecessor. He bragged about his personal properties from the presidential podium and suggested that he will hold next year’s G-7 gathering at his Doral golf course in Florida, which has “incredible” conference rooms and “magnificent” bungalows.
And he defended both Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, suggesting that the Russian strongman deserves an invite to future G-7 summits and that the North Korean dictator is an honorable man who will not let Trump down.
The U.S. president’s news conference here was presaged by an aide saying Trump would answer anything if the first two questions stayed on topic. Trump seemed more interested when the questions went off topic — and for 68 minutes in a seaside auditorium, he offered a lens into his unorthodox mind, a range of false or dubious statements, and the myriad ways he has changed the presidency in 31 months.
He attacked former president Barack Obama’s intellect while defending Putin for annexing part of Crimea — a move that drove Russia’s expulsion from what was then called the G-8. To many world leaders, Putin’s move was illegal and had nothing to do with Obama. To Trump, it showed that his predecessor was a sucker and that criticizing him (along with former vice president “Sleepy Joe” Biden, in Trump’s words) was fair banter. He veered into a similar diatribe on Obama not enforcing a “red line” in Syria, though he was not queried on the topic.
“President Putin outsmarted President Obama,” Trump said, calling it “very embarrassing” for Obama. The realpolitik of the world, he said, meant Russia should be in the room at future summits. And he said he would like to invite Putin next year to his golf course, claiming without evidence that other leaders agreed with his predilection — even as they said otherwise.
Asked why he continued to falsely blame Obama for the annexation of Crimea, as he did almost a dozen times Monday, the president suggested that he knew the black journalist asking the question, Yamiche Alcindor of PBS News, had an ulterior motive. “I know you like President Obama,” he said, without saying how he knew that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/sixty-eight-minutes-in-biarritz-a-glimpse-in-to-trumps-unorthodox-mind/2019/08/26/25a26f60-c823-11e9-8067-196d9f17af68_story.html?wpisrc=nl_rainbow&wpmm=1
Calling Trump's mind unorthodox is being too kind. Demented or evil are better discriptors.
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