O Meloni!
Italy's Iron Lady torches Trump
“She begged me to take a picture with her,” Trump lied. “She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her.”
The crass, juvenile, utterly fabricated story was typical Trump.
We’ve become numb to the way he talks about women and about our allies. His boorish insults have almost become white noise; his groveling to the world’s thugs so predictable it has ceased to shock.
As he indulges his self-stroking fantasies of himself as one of history’s “Great Men,” Trump has come to expect the targets of his ridicule to react like Lindsey Graham, Jeff Bezos or members of his cabinet.
Giorgia Meloni, was not having it, and her reaction is worth dwelling on.
Happy Saturday.
On Thursday, Trump delivered what he probably regarded as a throw-away line; a routine insult designed to demean the Italian prime minister; the sort of thing he throws at female reporters and critics all the time.
“She begged me to take a picture with her,” Trump said. “She wanted a picture with me so badly. I wouldn’t have taken it, but I felt sorry for her.”
On Friday, the Iron Lady of Italy fired back. And it was spectacular. You really need to watch the short video: her 32-second riposte is a model of devastating concision. Every sentence is a dagger:
She calls him a liar. “So, some things deserve an immediate answer The claims made by Donald Trump are totally made-up statements.”
She doesn’t brush it off. “Frankly, I am shocked.”
She calls out the pattern: “I don’t understand why the president of the United States behaves like this with his allies.”
“It is not the first time that happened.”
Then the dagger. “I can only say that I am sorry that he does not show the same determination with the enemies of the west and the United States, whose leaders he treats with far greater indulgence.
Finally, the lady is not for turning: “But there is one thing he needs to remember: neither I nor Italy ever beg.”
Besides Meloni’s retort, the Italian reaction to Trump’s profoundly stupid gibe was fierce. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani announced that he was canceling his U.S. visit, which was scheduled for next week.
“The serious and offensive words of President Trump towards Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni offend all of Italy,” he wrote on social media. “For this reason, I have decided to cancel my visit to the United States scheduled for the next 21 and 22 June.”
At one time Meloni was quasi-friendly with Trump, who seemed smitten with the Italian prime minister. So, her break with him is notable in itself; but it’s also indicative of the way Trump has torched so many of his relationships. Via Aaron Blake at CNN: “A growing number of foreign leaders have had it with Trump.”
In finding some backbone vis-a-vis Trump, Meloni has plenty of company these days. While Trump has long reveled in throwing his weight around on the world stage and forcing leaders to cater to him, his growing provocations and declining political stock appeared to have steeled some of those leaders’ spines to speak out against him.
Meanwhile, Trump (of course) is now doubling down on his insults. This morning, he again posted his fake story about Meloni “begging” him for a photo and wrote: “She is doing poorly in Italy with her level of popularity, possibly because she turned down the United States of America, a Country that truly loves and protects Italy.”
Meloni fired back:
“President Trump, these constant, unprovoked attacks are senseless.
”As for my popularity, being your friend certainly has not helped it, nor does it depend on my relationship with you. My popularity depends on my ability to defend Italy’s national interest, and that is exactly what I have always done.
”That is also what I did regarding the American military bases in Italy. Their use is governed by agreements that we have always respected, and that cannot be violated as long as I am Prime Minister. Italy remains a sovereign nation.
”In any case, my popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours.”
Bravissima!
Trump’s “Great Man” Theory
We need to balance two things at once: There is something deeply pathetic about Trump’s megalomania. It is also profoundly dangerous, because this is the guy who still has his fingers on the nuclear button.
Even in his moment of failure and abject surrender, Trump is indulging fantasies of omnipotence. Via the Guardian: “Comparison to Hitler, Mao, Stalin? Trump says: ‘Sounds good to me!’”
The US president reposted a short text in which the author writes:
“Historically, powerful people were characterized by brutal conquest and the fear that they instilled in the populations that came under their influence. Common names that would come to mind are Alexander the Great, the Caesars, Genghis Khan, Attila the Hunt, Tamburlaine, Napoleon and, more recently, Hitler, Mao, and Stalin.
“The overwhelming difference between each of the above when compared with President Trump is their lack of global reach.”
“Sounds good to me!” Trump wrote, naming the author as “presidential historian Dave King”.
King is not, in fact, a historian, but a Scottish-born businessman now living in South Africa who was previously the chair of the Rangers Football Club, based in Glasgow, which competes in the Scottish Premiership.
Trump seems to have first encountered him when King was caddying for his friend Gary Player, the Hall of Fame golfer, who was participating at an event in his honor.
This was not a one-off. In fact, Trump seems to be obsessed with comparisons with the monsters of history. Via Axios:
In “Regime Change,” coming Tuesday from The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, Trump proudly shows off a document arguing he’s more powerful than Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Stalin, Mao and Hitler.
Trump “began reading from it,” the authors write, “reciting the names of some of history’s most powerful figures” and explaining how each “fell short of his own power as U.S. president.”
“They didn’t have airplanes, right? You couldn’t travel around,” Trump said of Alexander the Great, the Caesars and William the Conqueror. “Napoleon,” he added “with relish,” according to the authors.
Haberman and Swan write that the revealing part was “the evident pleasure he took in the company of Mao, Hitler, and Stalin” — and “the untroubled ease with which he accepted a place among men who had reshaped the world through conquest and fear.”
And, on Thursday, Trump told Axios’s Marc Caputo that that he’s discovered “no limits” to his power since going to war with Iran.
Hints of that grandiose theory of power surfaced throughout Trump’s interview with Axios, hours after returning from what he called a “very dominant” G7 summit in France.
Trump named China’s Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi as the world leaders he most admires, praising Xi as “all business” and Modi as “a very tough cookie.”
Exit take: Something something something, clown with a flamethrower.
Today’s Podcasts
Trump’s Great Man Fetish was one of the topics of today’s podcast with Sofia Kinzinger.
Subscribers can listen to an ad-free version right here… or you can watch on YouTube / Listen (and subscribe) on Apple/ Spotify / iHeart / RSS Feed
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I also talked about Trump’s megalomania with Molly Jong-Fast.
Finally, An Update on Trump‘s Green Swamp Fiasco
Really this is beyond parody. A reader writes: “If you were going to make up a crooked contractor for a spoof, you couldn’t make up a more complete cliche of a crooked contractor.”
Via the NYT: “Firm Tied to Trump Donor Got No-Bid Contract to Clean Reflecting Pool.”
Federal contracting records show that firm’s ultimate owner is the J.J. Cafaro Investment Trust, led by John J. Cafaro, a donor to Mr. Trump and a neighbor to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in Florida. The water treatment company also listed Mr. Cafaro’s Palm Beach mansion as its address in Florida corporate records, and listed his investment trust’s phone number and email in Ohio lobbying records.
This guy:
FFS.
Saturday dogs
Large GSD watches local man at lake.
The GOP should take lessons from Prime Minister Meloni in what having a spine looks like.
If Hollywood was still making Godfather movies , J.J. Cafaro could get a part without an audition.